Summer to Get Warmer, Expect Hurricanes: Forecasters
Date: 16-Jul-04
Country: USA
Author: Bernard Woodall
This will keep forecasters from having to adjust their long-range forecasts for summer made before the season began, said Chris Hyde of EarthSat and Joe Bastardi of AccuWeather.
Next week is traditionally the hottest week of the year.
"It's halftime of the game," said Bastardi, "Wait and see. The latter part of the summer, because of the warm water temperatures off the East Coast, will be the warmest of the summer from the Great Lakes to the Northeast."
Chris Hyde, forecaster with EarthSat, said that the heavily populated Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions will end up with full-summer temperatures that are two degrees Fahrenheit more than normal.
"Overall, we are still on track to have a warmer summer than we did last year, but you can't get much cooler than we were last summer," said Chris Hyde. In 2003, summer temperatures were as much as 3 degrees below normal.
But it has not been cooler in all regions, as the South and the eastern Midwest have been normal to 2-3F higher than normal average temperatures, Hyde said.
Bastardi points out that Dallas temperatures will go above 100F Thursday and Friday, and that much of the South has already experienced slightly warmer than normal temperatures this year.
The moderate start to summer has pressured U.S. natural gas prices down almost 15 percent from their May highs to about $5.85 per mmBtu, as many of the gas-fired power generators used to meet peak summer air conditioning demand have sat idle.
Prices had been in a steady uptrend this spring, topping out at $6.80 in late May, as unexpectedly-warm spring weather fueled expectations for a hot, early start to summer.
ACTIVE HURRICANE SEASON EXPECTED
Bastardi said weather patterns to this point indicate a heavy hurricane season for the U.S. Gulf Coast, which is rich in oil refineries and gas production platforms.
"When you see air troughs of low pressure over the Great Lakes that split, that often is the type of pattern that draws storms into the Gulf Coast," Bastardi said.
In May, just before the official start of hurricane season, forecaster William Gray of Colorado State University said there will 14 named tropical storms this year, with eight of them becoming hurricanes.
Of the hurricanes, three will be of more than 111 mph, Gray said.
U.S. government forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also said there would be a busy hurricane season. NOAA predicted 12 to 15 tropical storms, with six to eight named storms and two to four becoming major hurricanes.
Gray predicted that the chance of a major hurricane hitting land in the United States is about 71 percent this year, up from the long-term average of about 52 percent.
Long-term averages are for the hurricane season to have 9.6 named storms, of which 5.9 become hurricanes and 2.3 being major hurricanes.
So far this year, there have been no tropical storms in the Atlantic-Caribbean.
