Colorado State University's hurricane forecast team is predicting an above-average season for the Atlantic basin in 2010, which includes all tropical storms and hurricanes in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.
The forecast calls for 15 named tropical storms, of which eight will become hurricanes. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when its sustained wind speeds surpass 74 mph. Of those eight, four are expected to develop into major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5) with maximum wind speeds of 111 mph or greater.
Looking at averages that go back to 1950, a typical Atlantic hurricane season sees 10 named storms — six of them hurricanes, with two major.
"We expect current moderate El Nino conditions to transition to neutral conditions by this year's hurricane season," says Phil Klotzbach, lead forecaster on the Colorado State hurricane forecast team. "The dissipating El Nino, along with the expected anomalously warm Atlantic ocean sea-surface temperatures, will lead to favorable dynamic and thermodynamic conditions for hurricane formation and intensification."
Colorado State's Tropical Meteorology Project is the nation's longest-running and most well-known forecast team. Begun by William Gray in 1984, these seasonal forecasts are used by insurance companies, emergency managers and the media to prepare Americans for the season's likely hurricane threat
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