June 2007 | Main | August 2007
July 27, 2007
Hurricane Forecasters Update Predictions
Local Florida television station reporting:
WSI Corporation, a private forecasting firm has adjusted its outlook, lowering the predicted number of named storms from 15 to 14.
WSI also now predicts six of those storms will become hurricanes. Their earlier forecast had eight.
A meteorologist with the company says ocean temperatures are cooler than expected in the tropical Atlantic region, which forced the re-evaluation of their numbers.
Not really much of a dialing back, but I guess some of these private weather firms are trying to cover their tracks a bit since the season has been so quiet up to now. Maybe they will come out looking a little better than the government sources in the end - but you never know with the weather.
July 26, 2007
Worst of Atlantic hurricane season still to come
Despite the quiet out there and the scaling back by some forecasters, USAToday still manages to go with the scary headline "Worst of Atlantic hurricane season still to come":
"There's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary," Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said of the Atlantic season's first two months. "It's not slow. It's not fast."
On average, June and July produce zero to two named storms or hurricanes. So far this year there have been two. Andrea formed in early May, Barry on June 1.
There's plenty of evidence the first two months are meaningless as an indicator for the rest of the season.
July 14, 2007
No hurricanes forming despite ripe conditions
That is a great headline for Caribbean residents and travelers, but it seems that everyone is so afraid of significant storms from the constant media drumbeat hyping the hurricane season that travel to the region during this time of year is very slow. More from Florida Today:
But no weather systems are biting at those ripe conditions.
"There are a couple of tropical waves out there, but nothing of significance," Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Friday.
The Atlantic typically warms and the air over it moistens during mid- to late summer, which can spark tropical storm activity.
July 12, 2007
Tropics remain peaceful
There have been a few weak tropical waves coming across the Atlantic but overall it is very quiet on the tropical weather front. People are actually starting to dial back their storm predictions for 2007. Here is a little more from a Louisiana newspaper:
But there's plenty of time to go in this hurricane season.
We've been expecting storms early and often over the last several years, but, on average over the long term, the first storm to reach hurricane strength appears on Aug. 14, the second on Aug. 30 and the third on Sept. 9.
There are a few tropical waves out in the Atlantic this morning and they will continue to roll out of Africa in the coming weeks, but there is nothing that is too threatening in the immediate forecast.
July 5, 2007
Tropical wave organizing
It is a way off but I guess everyone is watching very closely:
If the area of showers takes on the properties of a tropical storm - a big "if," forecasters say - it would become the third named storm of the 2007 hurricane season, Chantal.
This season, subtropical storm Andrea formed in early May and Tropical Storm Barry swirled to life in early June. Neither amounted to much.
The area that forecasters are now watching is about 1500 miles east of the Southern Windward Islands. In other words, between Africa and South America.
More here.
