An active hurricane season is being predicted by Colorado State University researchers, who are suggesting slightly above-average activity in the Atlantic during 2018, the university said in a statement Thursday.
Researchers said a weak La Niña this past winter has weakened slightly over the past few weeks and while there is the potential that a weak El Niño could develop by the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, the odds of significant El Niño development appear relatively low as well.
El Niño, according to researchers, tends to increase upper-level westerly winds across the Caribbean into the tropical Atlantic, breaking up hurricanes as they try to form.
Colorado State researchers are predicting 14 named storms, slightly above the climatological median from 1981-2010 of 12. The researchers are predicting that those named storms will hang around for a total of 70 days and will produce seven hurricanes.
Researchers are predicting that three of those storms will turn into major hurricanes, from Category 3 to 5 with winds of more than 111 miles per hour, the statement noted.
The Tampa Bay Times wrote that the Colorado State annual April forecast is traditionally one of the first examinations of the upcoming Atlantic storm season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.
Phil Klotzbach, a Colorado State research scientist and the forecast lead author, told the Times that Atlantic waters have started the year colder than normal but have significantly warmed in the spring and summer. Klotzbach added, though, that if the trend continues this year, the warm waters can cause another active season.
The annual study, which started in 1984, produced a variety of interesting stats for the upcoming season, including the probability of major hurricanes making landfall.
The study predicts that the U.S. coastline has a 63 percent change of a major hurricane making landfall, 39 percent for the U.S. East Coast, 38 percent for the Gulf Coast from the Florida panhandle westward to Brownsville, and 52 percent for the Caribbean.
"The years 1960, 1967 and 2006 had near-average Atlantic hurricane activity, while 1996 and 2011 were both above-normal hurricane seasons," Klotzbach said in the CSU statement.
AccuWeather predicted in a report earlier this week six to eight hurricanes this season with three to five of those turning into major storms.
The Colorado State study was started in 1984 and will issue updates May 31, July 2 and Aug. 2, according to the statement.
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