Oh, and by the way.
There's a chance - right now, just a chance - that a subtropical or tropical storm will form north of Hispaniola late this weekend or early next week.
It would get the first name on the 2010 list: Alex.
Jim Lushine, retired warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Miami office, said Thursday in an e-mail he believes it's "likely" the storm will form. He also believes it will move northwest toward the Florida-Georgia state line "but directly will do little but stir up some waves at the beaches."
The first tropical disturbance of the 2010 hurricane season has been designated Invest 90L by the National Hurricane Center. On Friday morning, the system was at 27.5N and 72.3W, or 355 miles east-northeast of Nassau, Bahamas, and 481 miles east of Palm Beach.
Pressure was at 1013 mb and sustained wind speed was estimated at 29 mph. An Invest designation means the area is being closely monitored for tropical development - it does not necessarily mean it will become a tropical storm.
National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen was more guarded.
"Some of the models are trying to spin up an area of low pressure. Whether it's tropical, subtropical or no tropical we don't know yet," he said.
"It's not unusual at all, especially in that part of the world," Feltgen said.
"It's not like somebody throws a switch on June 1," Feltgen said. That date, which marks the official start of the season, is just a week and a half away.
Tropical Storm Arthur formed May 31, 2008. The last one before that was Arlene, which formed off Cuba May 6, 1981.
Subtropical Storm Andrea formed off the North Florida coast on May 9, and subtropical storm Ana looped about in the Atlantic 200 miles south of Bermuda for nine days in April 2003. April!
Of 1,354 tropical storms recorded in the Atlantic Ocean between 1851 and 2007, only 18 formed in May, and only four became hurricanes. None struck land. Between 1966 and 2007 only four formed in May and one became a hurricane.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/weather-news/no-its-not-june-1-but-theres-a-699835.html
Hurricane Forecasters See Worst Looming in 2010 Atlantic Season
May 03, 2010, 11:02 PM EDT
By Brian K. Sullivan
May 4 (Bloomberg) -- The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season may rival some of the worst in history as meteorological conditions mirror 2005, the record-breaking year that spawned New Orleans- wrecking Katrina, forecasters say.
The El Nino warming in the Pacific is fading and rain is keeping dust down in Africa, cutting off two phenomena that help retard Atlantic hurricane formation.
Perhaps most significantly, sea temperatures from the Cape Verde Islands to the Caribbean, where the storms usually develop, are above normal and reaching records in some areas.
We have only seen that in three previous seasons, 2005, 1958 and 1969, and all three of those years had five major hurricanes, said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground Inc. I am definitely thinking that this is going to be a severe hurricane season.
With less than a month to go before the official June 1 start of the season, predictions are for 14 to 18 named storms. In an average year, there are 11 named storms with winds of at least 39 mph (62 kph), six of them reaching the 74-mph threshold for hurricanes and two growing into major storms with winds of 111 mph or more, the National Hurricane Center says.
Last years nine named storms were the fewest since 1997. Three became hurricanes and none made landfall in the U.S. As the number of hurricanes rises, so do the chances of one striking the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico or Floridas agricultural areas.
Gulf Threat
The Gulf is home to about 27 percent of U.S. oil and 15 percent of U.S. natural gas production, the U.S. Department of Energy says. It also has seven of the 10 busiest U.S. ports, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Florida is the second- largest producer of oranges after Brazil.
Energy disruptions could occur if 2010 produces a repeat of 2008, when hurricanes Gustav and Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast about a week apart, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, a Houston-based consulting company.
The good news going into hurricane season is that we have significant amounts of inventories of gasoline and distillate fuels, he said.
In 1998, storms caused 15 million barrels of oil outages and 48 billion cubic feet of natural gas outages in the Gulf, according to AccuWeather Inc. records. In 2005, it was 110 million barrels and 683 bcf, and in 2008, 62 million barrels of oil and 408 bcf of gas were shut in.
Storms Destruction
The usual misery and destruction from a Gulf hurricane hit may be magnified if the spill of crude from a burned-out rig near Louisiana hasnt been stopped before storms arrive with winds and waves that could push oil inland.
In 2005, Katrina struck Louisiana, Mississippi and part of Alabama, unleashing floods that devastated New Orleans, killing more than 1,800 people, displacing 250,000 and causing about $125 billion in damage, according to the hurricane center.
Joe Bastardi, chief hurricane forecaster at AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania, said he doesnt think the Atlantic can produce 28 storms this year, as it did in 2005, the most active year on record.
I have 2005 in the mix of years to compare to 2010, Bastardi said. But if I had to choose, I would choose 1998 over 2005.
In 1998, 14 named storms formed, 11 of which turned into hurricanes, according to Weather Undergrounds website. There were 15 hurricanes in 2005.
AccuWeathers Call
AccuWeather currently calls for 16 to 18 storms to form. Bastardi predicts the current El Nino will change into a La Nina, cooling the Pacific in time to influence the hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30.
While El Nino fades, hot spots in the Atlantic set a monthly record in March, breaking a mark set in 1969, and tied the high set in June 2005, Masters said. Hurricanes draw on warm water to form and gain strength.
Colorado State University researchers William Gray and Phil Klotzbach chose 1958, 1966, 1969, 1998 and 2005 as the years that shared the most similarities with 2010.
In 1958, 10 storms, including five major hurricanes, formed after an El Nino faded.
In 1969, Hurricane Camille crashed into the U.S. Gulf Coast with winds in excess of 200 miles per hour. The exact strength is unknown because the storm destroyed all the wind measurement devices. It killed 256 people and caused $1.4 billion in damage.
East at Risk
The U.S. coast from North Carolina to Maine has a raised risk of being hit by a hurricane this year, said Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist for Andover, Massachusetts-based WSI Inc.
The Northeast usually has about a 25 percent chance of a hurricane strike, Crawford said. This year, it has a 48 percent chance, close to the 50 percent chance the Gulf of Mexico and Florida have every year, he said.
Were not too bullish on the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, said Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist at Planalytics Inc. in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Were liking the track threatening Florida and the eastern Gulf, followed by the entire Gulf and the third emphasis would be on the Carolinas.
Rouiller said he believes a trough will develop along the U.S. East Coast from the mid-Atlantic states through New England, shielding the region. That may mean more risk for the Canadian Maritime provinces, which have some oil platforms and refineries.
The U.S. Climate Prediction Center will issue its forecast on May 20.
Get Ready
Each year, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center urges everyone living along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts to prepare for a storm strike, Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman, said in an e- mail.
Its very important to note that a seasonal outlook cannot forecast where and when storms will form, let alone if or where they will make landfall and at what strength, Feltgen said. It only takes one storm hitting your area to make it a bad year, regardless of the number of storms that are forecast in the seasonal outlook.
An example of how one storm can overshadow an entire season came in 1992. That year, only six named storms and one sub- tropical system formed, and only two of those made landfall, according to hurricane center records.
One of them was Hurricane Andrew, which devastated parts of Florida and Louisiana, killing 26 people and causing $26.5 billion in damage. Its top winds of 165 at landfall in Florida made it a Category 5 storm, the most powerful on the five-step Saffir-Simpson Scale.
It was only the third time such a powerful storm hit the U.S.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...ee-worst-looming-in-2010-atlantic-season.html
Researchers Ponder a Hurricane Hitting the Oil-Slicked Gulf of Mexico
By LAUREN MORELLO of ClimateWire
Published: May 17, 2010
The Atlantic Ocean hurricane season begins June 1, and scientists tracking the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are beginning to think about what would happen if a storm hit the growing slick.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration won't release its initial hurricane season forecast until Thursday, but experts said it would only take one storm in the Gulf to complicate the ongoing effort to stanch the gushing oil and limit its environmental impact.
NOAA talking points list a number of open questions, such as whether the oil plume could affect storm formation by suppressing evaporation of Gulf water and how a hurricane could change the size and location of the oil slick. There's little information about what would happen if a hurricane hit the spill, experts said.
Still, several scientists are worried that a hurricane could drive oil inland, soiling beaches and wetlands and pushing polluted water up river estuaries.
"My 'oh, no' thought is that a hurricane would pick up that oil and move it, along with salt, up into interior regions of the state that I am convinced the oil will not reach otherwise," said Robert Twilley, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University.
"The bottom line is, how much oil are we going to get into our wetlands? We don't know," he said. "This thing is gushing out in these huge numbers."
That's a question that Florida State University researchers Steven Morey and Dmitry Dukhovskoy are trying to answer with computer models of storm surge and ocean currents.
A somewhat mixed picture
"The storm could potentially transport the oil over some distance, we're not sure how far," said Morey, a physical oceanographer. "It could maybe break up the masses of the oil, through mixing. And it could also cause oil to wash over the land in a storm surge."
He and Dukhovskoy hope to have initial results by the time the storm season begins in roughly two weeks. But first they must tweak their computer models to take oil's physical properties into account.
"Oil on water changes the stress on the water from the winds," Morey said. "Oil will essentially slide over the water and change the roughness of the water. That's why we call it an oil slick. ... The waves present a technical challenge, as well."
But Dukhovskoy said he believes the hardest problem might be predicting the size and location of the slick at the beginning of hurricane season, so the scientists can feed it into their computer models.
While the government hasn't released its initial predictions for this year's hurricane season, other experts expect an active year.
Last month, Colorado State University forecasters Bill Gray and Phil Klotzbach said they "continue to see above-average activity for the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season." The pair are betting that warm ocean temperatures and a weakening El Niño will produce 15 named storms, including eight hurricanes. Half of those, they say, will be major hurricanes -- classified as Category 4 or 5.
An above-average hurricane year
Another hurricane watcher, AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi, puts that number even higher. He foresees 16 to 18 named storms, and believes this year's hurricane season is in line with those of 1998, 2008 and the record-setting 2005 season, which produced hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Emily and Dennis, among others.
Back in Louisiana, Robert Twilley is thinking about the worst-case scenario and hoping that if Louisiana's wetlands are hit, they'll continue their remarkable recent streak of recovering from natural disasters.
In 2000, a drought in the southeastern United States turned 100,000 acres of Louisiana's wetlands into mud flats, or "brown marsh." In 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita carried Gulf water deep into the wetlands. Slow to drain out, the salty water dried out the marshes, Twilley said.
In both cases, scientists saw signs of recovery within a year. But there's no formula for predicting how resilient the Gulf Coast's beaches and wetlands might be in the face of an oil spill-hurricane one-two punch. And any recovery would come in the face of the ongoing wetlands loss from human intervention like canals and other earthworks that prevent silt from replenishing the coastal marshes. Louisiana now loses approximately 15 square miles of wetlands each year.
"These systems will recover," Twilley said. "It's going to be the length of time that's uncertain. And the important thing is, what happens in the meantime? What services do the wetlands provide the state of Louisiana? Fisheries, flood control, nutrient removal, habitat for ducks and nesting birds."
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/0...s-ponder-a-hurricane-hitting-the-o-86257.html
2010 Hurricane Names
Alex
Bonnie
Colin
Danielle
Earl
Fiona
Gaston
Hermine
Igor
Julia
Karl
Lisa
Matthew
Nicole
Otto
Paula
Richard
Shary
Tomas
Virginie
Walter
