2008 Hurricane Season Forecast

You may not want to think about, but hurricane season is just around the corner. Meteorologists already have their eye on the upcoming season, and they're making their predictions. Over the weekend, the University of South Alabama held their annual Southeastern Coastal & Atmospheric Processes Symposium. Meteorologists and meteorology students flocked to Mobile to discuss the upcoming season and past storm research. One of the leading experts in the meteorology, Dr. Phil Klotzbach talked to me about his forecast.

Klotzbach says his fascination with weather all started with one storm named Gloria in 1985. "That was the storm that got me interested in studying hurricanes." Ever since Hurricane Gloria, Klotzbach has been interested in all types of weather. And we're interested in what he has to say about it, especially hurricanes. That's because Klotzbach is now the lead author of Colorado State University’s hurricane forecasts. Scientists from Colorado State University have forecasted seasonal hurricane outlooks since the 1980s.

Klotzbach says, "When you issue a seasonal forecast and people cover it, the media covers it and you get publicity, obviously if your forecast doesn't do that well, like our forecast in the past couple of years, certainly it's not a good feeling."
But that doesn't stop him from trying to figure out better ways to forecast.
"You want to do well, and do the best that you can. So when you have a forecast that isn't successful you try and go back to see what happened, why did you bust, and try to improve on those forecasts."

There are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to making seasonal forecasts.
"We look at a lot of large scale climate features. We look at historical relationships, sea surface temperature patterns in the Atlantic and the Pacific related to El Nino. We look at atmospheric sea level pressure patterns, wind shear patterns, things like that."

His new forecast for the 2008 season comes out in April, but he let us in on his prediction...
"We put out our first forecast for 2008 in December which called for a fairly active season, about 125% of an average season. We are going to be updating that forecast, we are still waiting for the final numbers to come in. At this point it still looks like we will have a fairly active season this year." Even if this season is active or inactive, the magic word is preparation. “No matter what the forecast, whether you are predicting above or below average everybody along the coastline should certainly be prepared, have a plan in place, and know what to do if a storm threatens."

You may be familiar with Klotzbach's predecessor, and co-author at Colorado State, Dr. Bill Gray. According to their December forecast, Klotzbach says to expect 13 named storms, compared to the 50 year average of 10 named storms. He will continue to fine tune his forecast in the coming months, and issue updated forecasts in April and June.