Experts Make Their Predictions On Hurricane Season

By PATRICK LUCE (Patch Staff)

East-coasters: breathe easy, but stay prepared.

This should be a below-average Atlantic hurricane season, according to top experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. New ENgland hasn’t been hit with a tropical storm since Sandy devastated parts of the coast in 2012 and Irene soaked the region in 2011.

The NOAA says its outlook for the 2015 hurricane season is being made with a 90 percent confidence level.

The confidence level is up from the 70 percent given in May and is the highest for an NOAA prediction since it started doing seasonal outlooks in 1998.

Hurricane season officially runs from May 1 to November 30, and three tropical storms have already formed in 2015, with two making landfall — Ana in South Carolina and Bill in Texas. Claudette formed off the coast of North Carolina but never hit land.

• Related: What Are The Names For 2015 Hurricanes?

A major factor for the prediction is the presence of a strong El Niño—a weather pattern in the Pacific that makes it tougher for storms to develop in the Atlantic—which is expected to last through December 2015 and into the spring of 2016 in North America.

The atmospheric conditions created by El Niño, combined with predicted cooler waters, are a recipe for fewer strong storms.

For specifics, the NOAA says it is giving a 70 percent chance of three to seven more named storms, with one to four potentially becoming hurricanes and either one or none of those becoming major hurricanes.

Those ranges would be down from seasonal averages of 12 named storms, six hurricanes and three major hurricanes, according to the NOAA.

Still, the association is urging residents to be prepared.

“Tropical storms and hurricanes can and do strike the United States, even in below-normal seasons and during El Niño events,” Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said in an NOAA press release.

“Regardless of our call for below-normal storm activity, people along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts should remain prepared and vigilant, especially now that the peak months of the hurricane season have started.”