Experts still expect active hurricane season

The 2010 hurricane season is off to a slow start, but weather experts expect a bigger finish.

In their midseason update Thursday, federal storm researchers lowered the predicted number of hurricanes slightly this year - but only because of a relatively quiet start with two tropical storms and one hurricane since the season began June 1.

"Nonetheless, the key message is that significant activity is still predicted for the remainder of the season," said Gerry Bell, lead hurricane forecaster for the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center. The season has "the potential of being one of the more active on record."

The center predicts the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, is likely to see 14 to 20 "named storms" - tropical storms and hurricanes. Of those, eight to 12 are expected to be hurricanes, with top winds of at least 74 mph, and four to six major hurricanes or Category 3, 4 or 5 storms with winds of at least 111 mph.

In May, the center had warned of up to 14 hurricanes and seven major hurricanes for the season that ends Nov. 30.

Meanwhile, Colorado State University on Wednesday maintained its earlier 2010 forecast of 10 hurricanes, five of them major.

"It's a scary thing to see those sort of numbers," said James Callahan, commissioner of the Nassau County Office of Emergency Management. "We are overdue for a hurricane. We are concerned, and we are concerned about the complacency of our population."

Bell said factors other than global warming explain the hurricane activity. One is warmer-than-average water temperatures. "Currently the tropical Atlantic is running about 2 to 3 degrees above normal," he said.

"The water temperature by us [around Long Island] counts too," Callahan said. Unusually high water temperatures in this region "will maintain a higher category storm coming up here."

There are also upper atmospheric wind patterns conducive to storms, he said. Wind shear, which can tear apart storms, will be weaker since El Niño patterns in the eastern Pacific have dissipated. Strong wind shear helped suppress storm development last year.

Bell said the seasonal average is eight hurricanes, two of them major. Peak periods for major storms are late August through October.

This is expected to be the 11th above-normal hurricane activity year out of the last 16 since a period of unusual activity began in 1995, he said.

Colorado State researcher Phil Klotzbach said Thursday the probability of a landfall in New York is usually about 8 percent, but 14 percent this year. For a major hurricane, the historical average is 3 percent, but 6 percent this year.

"NOAA [National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration] does not make landfall predictions . . . because hurricane landfalls are largely determined by the weather patterns in place at the time a hurricane is approaching," Bell said.

Six hurricanes have struck the Atlantic coast in the past decade.