2006 Hurricane Forecast

Hurricane Forecast for the 2006 Season

Hurricane experts predict a very active hurricane season this year: thirteen (13) to sixteen (16) tropical storms, eight (8) to ten (10) could become hurricanes, and four (4) to six (6) could become major hurricanes of Category Three (3) strength or higher, according to a report by Conrad Lautenbacher, undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and a NOAA administrator.

The hurricane season officially begins June 1 and ends November 30.

"There's no reason why New Orleans can't get hit by another major hurricane in 2006," said Stanley Goldenberg, a meteorologist in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane research division.

Goldenberg continued: "Although no one can say with a high level of certainty, it is certainly possible that the basic steering pattern that shifted in 2004 to start to favor increased numbers of U.S. hurricane landfalls -- especially for Florida and the Gulf of Mexico region -- could continue for several more years."

"We're still in an active era," said Goldenberg, a member of the team that developed the forecast for the north Atlantic region. "But the fact is you don't need an active hurricane season to harm New Orleans."

During a slow year in 1992, Hurricane Andrew "came awfully close to the city," he said. The small but ferocious Cape Verde hurricane devastated areas along a path through the northwestern Bahamas, southern Florida and south-central Louisiana.

Katrina, too, was a Cape Verde hurricane, originally forming off the coast of Africa as a tropical depression, said Phil Grisby, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Slidell. Katrina made its way across the Atlantic as a depression before gaining strength in the Bahamas, he said.

Cape Verde hurricanes tend to have long lives, while those formed in the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico usually don't last quite as long, Grisby said.

The federal government's forecast follows a similar one released in April by a Colorado State University team, which predicts seventeen (17) named storms in 2006, nine (9) of which could become hurricanes, and five (5) could become intense hurricanes.

A prediction is something foretold or forecasted; a prophecy.

Last year's April forecast of the Colorado team and NOAA's May prediction were very optimistic and missed the mark.

In April 2005, the university team predicted thirteen (13) named storms, with seven (7) becoming hurricanes. In May 2005, NOAA predicted twelve (12) to fifteen (15) tropical storms, with seven (7) to nine (9) becoming hurricanes.

The 2005 hurricane season ended with a record twenty-eight (28) tropical storms and fifteen (15) hurricanes. The previous record had been twenty-one (21) tropical storms in a season, Grisby said.

William Gray, then the leader of the university team, updated his 2005 forecast in June to fifteen (15) tropical storms and eight (8) hurricanes, Grisby said. And NOAA revised its 2005 forecast in August to eighteen (18) to twenty-one (21) tropical storms and nine (9) to eleven (11) hurricanes.

Although NOAA is not forecasting a repeat of last year's season, the potential for hurricanes striking the United States is high, Lautenbacher said at a news conference in Miami. Many conditions affect the development and direction of hurricanes, including steering currents. Warmer ocean water combined with lower wind shear, weaker easterly trade winds and a more favorable wind pattern in the midlevels of the atmosphere are factors that collectively will favor development of storms in greater numbers and to greater intensity, according to NOAA. Warm water is the energy source for storms, while favorable wind patterns limit the wind shear that can tear apart a storm's building cloud structure.