Above Average Hurricane Forecast for 2011
Posted on Wed, Apr 13, 2011 @ 09:30 AM
From Continuity Central, here's a report from the Colorado State University forecast team. CSU, in its 28th year of predictions, has called for an above-average 2011 Atlantic basin hurricane season, based on current La Nina conditions. The team predicts 16 named storms, of which 9 will be expected to turn into hurricanes and 5 develop into major hurricanes.
“We expect that anomalously warm tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures combined with neutral tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures will contribute to an active season,” said Phil Klotzbach of the CSU Tropical Meteorology Project. Their forecast scheme relies on 29 years of historical data. Tropical cyclone activity in 2011 is expected to be approximately 175 percent of the average season. As a point of comparison, 2010's tropical cyclone activity was 196 of the average season.
Other probabilities for 2011 from the hurricane forecast team:
- 72% chance of at least one major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coastline
- 48% chance of at least one major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. east coast, including the Florida peninsula
- 47% chance of at least one major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. gulf coast, from the Florida panhandle west to Brownsville, TX
- 61% chance of at least one major hurricane tracking into the Caribbean
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