Mild Hurricane Season Expected
April 5, 2012 Colorado State University climatologists Philip Klotzbach and William Gray have released their extended range forecast for the 2012 Atlantic basin hurricane season. At first glance, the season appears to be setting up as a quieter one compared to recent years. The 2010 and 2011 Atlantic hurricane seasons tallied 19 named storms each.
Klotzbach and Gray, who recently appeared at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, site an expected dip in tropical activity due to a combination of an anomalously cool tropical Atlantic and the potential development of El Niño.
The forecast is based on a new extended-range early April statistical prediction scheme that utilizes 29 years of past data. Analog predictors also are utilized.
2012 Atlantic Basin Seasonal Hurricane Forecast
- Named Storms: 10
- Named Storm Days: 40
- Hurricanes: 4
- Major Hurricanes: 2
Probabilities For At Least One Major Hurricane Landfall On Each Of the Following Coastal Areas
- Entire U.S. coastline: 42% (average for last century is 52%)
- U.S. East Coast, Including Peninsula Florida: 24% (average for last century is 31%)
- Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville: 24% (average for last century is 30%)
Klotzbach and Gray are scheduled to issue seasonal updates of the 2012 Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts in early June and August.
Click here to view the entire forecast details.
