University forecast – 17 storms, 70 percent chance 1 will hit state

By Brian McBride News-Gazette Staff Writer

There will be 17 named storms this season, nine of which will become hurricanes, and almost a 70 percent chance that Florida will take a major hit, according to a Colorado State University research team report.

Researchers said there’s an 82 percent chance that at least one major hurricane will make landfall along the U.S. coastline in 2006.

The hurricane season began Thursday and ends Nov. 30.

And there is a 69 percent chance that a major hurricane will make landfall on the east coast, including the Florida peninsula, reports said.

Of the nine storms predicted to become hurricanes, five are expected to develop into intense, or major, hurricanes with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater, forecasters said.

“If the atmosphere and the ocean behave as they have in the past, we should have a very active season, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into storms that produce as much destruction as last year,” said Colorado State professor William Gray, who has led the forecast team for the past 22 years, in a prepared statement.

more: http://www.oscnewsgazette.com/index.php?option=news&task=viewarticle&sid=13032

We can think we are, but we're not.

The two remaining oaks I have left after Charley are only just now starting to heal. One has a giant crack in it and the tree guy has been working on saving it. I am not looking forward to this hurricane season. I have a knot in my stomach the entire time.Stress.

look very scaggly after 2004 four hurricanes went through this area. True that none of them were full power when they got here, but when there is one storm right after the other and one of those storms lasted for four days (was that Francis? I lose track of which storm was which after a while), the trees lost loads of limbs and needles. I'm not sure they will every recover.

I live in South Florida and I don't consider it a guessing game anymore. It's a fact. I'll have hurricane supplies ready and suitcases filled with important papers and pictures and the pets all ready to go. Even being that prepared, I know it will be a nightmare. How long can people live here knowing this is going to happen every year for at least ten to fifteen years into the future if not longer? Don't think I'll make it here. My friends have good paying long time careers going down here and how do you walk away from that? I suppose the first hurricane that wipes all the houses and jobs away will solve that problem.

Wow. I'm a bummer. Good luck and stay as safe as possible to everyone in the path of whatever is coming.

Hurricane Floyd was brushing the Florida (east) coast. We took I-95 and headed for I-4. It took us seven hours to transverse the 125 miles of I-4 which averages out to about seventeen miles per hour. But we were not moving that fast. After we cleared the cities area and were out to the more rural parts of I-4, we were flying at 70 mph.

While we were travelling at stop for ten minutes. go 100 feet, stop, go fifty feet, stop, etc., Floyd moved up the coast. Had Floyd moved inland, thousands and thousands of people would have been in serious jeopardy because there was no way to get off I-4 and no where to go.

Evacuating might be indicated, but the actual going might be more dangerous than staying. If it looks really bad this summer, I'll be looking for some high ground in the general area of where I live (there isn't much of that, though...) rather than risk my family on highways that will look more like parking lots than super highways.

impossiblity of trying to evacuate unless you do it the minute you here one "might" be coming in your direction. Even then, millions of other might be thinking the same thing. When you are near the bottom of the state ( not as bad as Key West ) and you realize you have no where to go but north...I'm really getting nervous. We all know these hurricanes are going to be much worse now than in the past 30 years. I have a friend begging me to move out to her home in NM. I've mentioned before that they are in drought conditions..so what to do, what to do.

Guess I'll just enjoy the next few days or weeks the best I can and hope no one gets slammed this year. If a nasty one does come this way, well, then I if I make it through it, I will finally decide to move out of here. ??

we had a thunderstorm here the other night that they had classified as "violent." The lightening was striking so hard that my house shook. The warmer temperatures are fueling
weather out of control. We have to start addressing this or we will all be disaster zones.

the Tampa area, is the lightning capital of the world, they say. We do get a lot of thunderstorms in Florida, but I've only seen a couple that compared to the strong storms we got when we lived up north. I think they are more severe there because weather systems that collide to produce them are more extreme. Here, the storms usually just form from the heat and humidity, build, rain themselves out, and dissipate. The worst ones are always from a cold front moving through and we don't get that many of those in South Florida.

Bush has begun to tap into "popular" opinion on "global warming" by hiring the new Treasury
secretary. He will make a token effort to commit to reduce greenhouse gases. Let's hope
that it reduces the risk that we all face.

We could cease producing CO2 and it would take years for the oceans to soak up what we have shot into the atmosphere. The climate is like a big ocean liner, it takes years/decades/centuries to change course once it gets going. But if we don't slow down the engines now we will be truly F**ked in the future.

what we've done, I wouldn't mind a commute car, that would just get me to and from work
here in the city.

the storms can get pretty nasty up here in the summer. the worst thing is that when the rain goes away the temperature just gets hotter. we have a lot of tornado warnings and heavy thunder storms all summer long. the good thing is that most of them last maybe an hour... i think one is rolling in now... better close up my jeep.

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