As the Atlantic hurricane season’s second named storm has faded into memory, hurricane forecaster William Gray predicts two more named storms in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico during the month of August.
One of those, said Gray and his team of researchers, will be a major hurricane, registering Category 3 or higher on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.
The forecast for an individual month is a new twist for the Colorado State University professor and his forecast team, who in the past have given predictions only for the entire hurricane season, which stretches from June 1 to November 30.
Despite the relatively slow start to this hurricane season – only two named storms, neither of which reached hurricane level – Gray and his team are not changing their full-season prediction.
“We’ve called for 12 storms and have seen two thus far, but in our experience that doesn’t suggest anything about the overall season,” Gray said. “No correlation has ever been established between early season storms and what might occur later in the season.”
The first of those named storms, Tropical Storm Allison, dumped heavy rains on Texas in June, and the second, Tropical Storm Barry, drenched the Florida coast before angling back to the Northwest as it slipped into a tropical depression.
More than 30 people lost their lives because of Allison and its accompanying flooding.
Barry threatened to become the season’s first Atlantic hurricane with 70 mph winds and a storm surge of 4 to 5 feet. A Category 1 hurricane has winds of at least 74 miles per hour.
Historically in Texas, Bret in 1999 was the first “major” hurricane, a storm with winds faster than 111 mph, to directly hit Texas following Alicia which hit Galveston and Houston on Aug. 18, 1983. In 1988 powerful Hurricane Gilbert brought heavy rain, gusty winds and several tornadoes to Texas when it came ashore in Mexico. The last hurricane of any category to hit Texas before Bret was Jerry in October 1989. Hurricane Chantal hit Texas in August 1989. Both Jerry and Chantal were Category 1 storms.
In 1998, however, two tropical storms hit Texas doing considerable damage. They were Tropical Storm Charley in August, and Tropical Storm Frances in September.
The worst natural disaster in U.S. history was the hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900. It killed at least 6,000 people.
Gray predicted that seven of the 12 storms during this season would reach hurricane strength, and three of those would be intense hurricanes.
The historic averages are 9.3 named storms, 5.8 hurricanes and 2.2 intense hurricanes, though the averages for the past six seasons have been higher.
“These numbers aren’t extreme, but they continue the trend in which hurricane activity appears to be on a multi-decadal upswing,” Gray said.
Gray predicts there is a 69 percent chance one of this season’s intense hurricanes will make landfall in the United States. He estimates a 50 percent chance a major hurricane will hit the East Coast (including the Florida Gulf coast up to the Panhandle), with a 39 percent chance a storm will make landfall on the Gulf coast from the Florida Panhandle to Brownsville, Texas.
Topics Florida Trends Catastrophe Texas Windstorm Hurricane Numbers
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