NOAA expects average hurricane season in 2012

Hurricane season may have started a little early this year, but the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration says that should be about the only unusual thing about the season.

In their annual pre-season forecast NOAA says conditions in the atmosphere and the ocean favor a near-normal hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin.

For the entire six-month season, which officially  begins June 1, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says there’s a 70 percent chance of nine to 15 named storms this season, of which four to eight will strengthen to a hurricane  and of those one to three will become major hurricanes with top winds of 111 mph or higher.

The seasonal outlook does not predict how many storms will hit land.

NOAA says there are competing factors that lead them to believe this will be an average season.

The main factor that might help storm development is a near-average sea surface temperature across much of the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, which is the main region ion which storms develop.

Two factors that can limit storm development, if they persist, are strong wind shear, which is hostile to hurricane formation, and cooler sea surface temperatures in the far eastern Atlantic.

But remember, it only takes one storm to make a hurricane season the worst ever.

This is the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 hurricane that devastated South Florida in 1992 during a season that produced only six named storms.

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