Saturday, May 06, 2006

Bad hurricane season predicted for Caribbean

The water temperatures in the Atlantic-Caribbean basin, the 2005 creche of Katrina, remain warm with no sign of a counteracting El Nino developing in the Pacific, so forecasters at Cuba's National Weather Institute are predicting an above average 15 tropical storms with at least nine expected to become hurricanes.

While it is nothing near the record setting 2005 Atlantic hurricane season of 28 tropical storms with 15 developing into full-blown hurricanes Cuban forecaster Maritza Ballester says batten down the hatch:

The first storm will form in late June or early July, she predicted, with three arising in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Everything points to an active season," said Ballester, developer of a mathematical model for predicting hurricanes.

Global warming is leaving a lot of cat 5 rocket-fuel for hurricanes lying around the Atlantic-Caribbean. Let's just hope that we get better at dealing with them, they are not going away for a while like they used to. Source: :::[SMH]

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