News

2015 Hurricane Season Forecast: Start of Less-active Era?

Eliot Kleinbers

04/01/2015

March 31--A hint that this year's hurricane season will be below average came Tuesday from Phil Klotzbach, of the well-known Colorado State University prognostication team.

"It's looking like it's going to be a pretty boring year for us," Klotzbach told a session at the National Hurricane Conference, meeting this week in Austin, Texas. His team issues its official forecast April 9.Klotzbach also said that we might be moving out of the decades-long cycle of more and stronger storms that's believed to have started in 1995, and which brought us the 2004 and 2005 seasons.

"It would be a very short cycle," he said, "but perhaps we are moving out of the active era, in which case I might be out of a job."

But he acknowledged we won't really know until years from now in hindsight.

Historically, in a given year, the chances are 50-50 that a hurricane will strike somewhere in Florida, and about one in five that a major storm will strike the state.

But it's now been a decade since a major hurricane, at Category 3 or higher on the on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, struck the U.S. mainland; that's the longest stretch on record. The storm was Wilma in 2005.

Wilma's also the last hurricane of any kind to have struck Florida. The state's population has grown by an estimated 3 million since then.

Klotzbach displayed one remarkable graphic showing that, between 1915 and 1964, 23 major hurricanes struck the U.S. east coast, all but eight of them in Florida. In the next 50 years, through 2014, only nine major hurricanes struck, five of those in Florida; in that time, Florida's population increased from less than 6 million to nearly 20 million.

The great 1926 hurricane "did probably $100 in damage," Klotzbach joked. Actually, it flattened boom-town Miami and was felt as far north as West Palm Beach. But if it struck now, Klotzbach said, insured losses are predicted in the range of $150 billion to $200 billion, making it second only to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which he said would do upwards of $300 billion today.

"We would obviously see levels of damage we haven't seen before because there's more people living in that area," he said. "Plus, we have more stuff. Now everyone has two or three cars, TVs, other stuff that's likely to be in harm's way."

But he said there are indications that the current cycle of high activity might be ending.

The 2014 season was just barely average, and mostly because of some late storms, Klotzbach said.

"If 2015 turns out they way we think it might, that does lend increased credence that we are moving out of this active era," Klotzbach said.

Klotzbach said his hint at a below-average 2015 comes from observations around the world suggesting a moderate or even strong "El Ni--o," the phenomenon that tends to hinder storm development, is forming. And virtually all of the forecasting models call for a moderate to strong event.

"Obviously it's not a slam dunk that we're going to get a strong El Ni--o," Klotzbach said. But, he said, "the conditions tend to favor that."

Another hindering factor: the same conditions that brought strong cold fronts to the northeast this winter drove cold ocean water from the northern climes into the tropics, reducing the warm water that fuels tropical systems.

"While our friends on the east coast have been complaining about the snow, it's been good about killing the hurricane season," he said.

"Right now, the Atlantic is anything but warm," Klotzbach said.

He said water temperatures are about 3 degrees below normal. "You wouldn't feel that if you were in the water, but it's pretty significant," he said.

Klotzbach said storms that form close to land are more likely to come ashore, because they haven't far to go, but many storms have been forming farther east, closer to Portugal and western Africa, which gives more time for them to make the historic curve to the north that's saved North America time and again.

He said a strong trough of dry air sat over the Atlantic last year and sent many of those storms north.

"All it takes is one trough to steer them," he said.

He would offer no guess for this year in that regard; he said his team has tried predicting steering currents in the past but that patterns are just too unpredictable, especially in the summer.

Klotzbach again stressed what all the seasonal forecasters say: Their predictions of the number of storms forming in a given season should in no way be taken as a planning tool, except to encourage people to prepare as if they will be hit by a storm. And forecasters never predict where, when or whether storms will strike. Record-setting seasons have led to no strikes on Florida, and Andrew struck during a year that produced only four hurricanes.

"We have been very fortunate, and even if this year is a quiet season, all it takes is one storm to make it a very active season," Klotzbach said.

Some "stating the obvious" disclaimers from Klotzbach: A storm that's just below Category 3 technically isn't a "major," but it is to the people it strikes. And a minor storm in a more populated area is worse than a major in a more sparse area.

William Gray, the venerable founder of the season forecasts, was not with Klotzbach this week in Austin: Gray, now 85, isn't traveling as much, Klotzbach said.

After the April 9 forecast, the Colorado State team will issue updates on June 1, the start of the season; then on July 1; and finally on Aug. 3, traditionally the start of the height of hurricane season, when monster storms often form.