Atlantic Ready For Industrial-Strength Storm Season - LA Times

TAMPA, Fla. — "With the onset of the 2005 hurricane season little more than two weeks away, meteorologists Friday warned that conditions in the Atlantic again were ripe for spawning tropical storms that could slam into Florida or other parts of the Eastern U.S. or Gulf Coast with potentially devastating and deadly consequences. Last season, Florida was hit by four hurricanes in six weeks, an unprecedented succession of natural disasters in the state that was blamed for 123 deaths and more than $42 billion in property damage.

Although predicting precisely where and when storms will make landfall is impossible, forecasters attending Florida's 19th annual Governor's Hurricane Conference agreed that the Atlantic Ocean was in the throes of an active period that could last two decades or more, and that the resulting increase in the number of tropical storms heightened the chance of one or more reaching the United States.

"We're in a new era now, and we're going to see a lot more major storms," said William Gray, a professor in Colorado State University's department of atmospheric science, who issues a much-awaited yearly prediction of hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin. The most recent calculations by Gray and his research associate Philip J. Klotzbach, presented on the final day of the conference, call for a 73% chance that a major hurricane — defined as one carrying sustained winds of 111 mph or more — will hit the U.S. coast between June 1 and November 30.

There was a 53% chance of a major hurricane making landfall this year in the Florida peninsula, they said, and a 41% likelihood of one coming ashore somewhere along the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Texas. "Right now, the Atlantic looks very favorable for storms," Klotzbach told the conference. "The sea surface temperatures are incredibly warm, much warmer than normal, and the sea-level pressures have been quite low."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hurricane14may14,0,2802301.story?coll=la-home-nation