Washington – Hurricane forecasters expect more tropical storms than normal this season, and “it just takes one to make it a bad year,” says Conrad Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
National Weather Service forecasters said Tuesday that they expect 13 to 17 tropical storms, with seven to 10 of them becoming hurricanes and three to five of them Category 3 or stronger. NOAA is the parent agency of the Weather Service.
David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said what keeps him up at night is concern about individual preparedness.
“If we are going to survive these storms, it takes all of us to be ready,” Paulison said, urging that the millions of residents in vulnerable areas prepare their homes for the storms.
Earlier this month, Philip Klotzbach, a research associate at Colorado State University, and Joe Bastardi, the chief hurricane forecaster for AccuWeather Inc., said they expect a more active storm cycle this year.
Almost as if to underscore the forecasts, a subtropical storm formed off the southeast coast and became Andrea, the first named storm of the year, well before the June 1 official beginning of hurricane season.
