10 Days to go - Do we even remember what a hurricane is like?

With 10 days to go until the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, here's an article from Friday's St. Petersburg Times, that is spot on to the psyche of people I talk to locally.

On another note, the amount of press coverage on the potential mixing of weather & oil could be overwhelming for the next couple of months.  Let's just hope the season is quiet until (and if) the mess can be contained.

Meanwhile, pre-season activity has already started off the Carolina coast. Here are the details

How Hurricanes Work

As the countdown to the start of the 2010 Hurricane Season is now less than 1 month, here's a quick webpage that shows How Hurricanes Work from the great website, "How Stuff Works"

2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast

Dr. Philip Klotzbach and Dr. William Gray's updated forecast calls for the high end of their initial 2010 forecast issued in December, 2009:

Named Storms: 15
Hurricanes: 8
Intense Hurricanes: 4  (Category 3-4-5)

They predict that the season will be significantly more active than the average from 1950-2000

Chance of at least one major hurricane making landfall:

Entire US Coastline:  69%  (average for last century is 52%)
U.S. East Coast including Florida Peninsula:  45% (average for last century is 31%)
Gulf Coast from the Florida panhandle to Brownsville:  44% (average for last century is 30%)

Hurricane Season officially starts June 1st, less than 60 days from now.  

Bad Luck-Victim of 5 different natural disasters----Indicted!

Desima James, 30, of Atlanta, Georgia, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on felony charges for fraudulently obtaining FEMA assistance funds intended for the victims of several different federally declared disasters. James was arraigned today before United States Magistrate Judge Alan Baverman, who set a bond hearing for Wednesday, March 31, 2010.

United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said of the case, "In just a few months, this defendant claimed to be a victim of five different natural disasters in five different states. He is accused of filing over 30 fraudulent claims with FEMA, using different names, fake social security numbers, and various addresses to enable him to escape detection and steal over $30,000 in disaster relief that was intended for real victims. He has now been caught and will be called to answer for this extensive fraud."

"This investigation is an excellent example of a partnership between federal law enforcement agencies to bring down a nationwide fraud scheme. The Postal Inspection Service aggressively pursues all crimes using the U.S. Mail to further a fraudulent scheme, but is especially vigilant with regards to any scheme that attempts to profit from natural disasters such as these destructive hurricanes," said Martin D. Phanco, Inspector in Charge of the Atlanta Division, U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

According to United States Attorney Yates, the charges and other information presented in court: From September through December 2005, James allegedly filed over 30 fraudulent claims for disaster relief with FEMA, claiming to have been a victim of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Hurricane Rita in Louisiana and Texas, Hurricane Wilma in Florida, severe storms and flooding in New Hampshire, and a tornado and severe storms in Indiana

Read More

Florida Cabinet Delays Hurricane Fund Assessments

The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund needs $710 million to continue to pay claims still coming in from 2005's Hurricane Wilma but it is going to have to wait to assess policyholders to get those funds.

The Florida Cabinet yesterday indicated it wants more of those claims investigated to make sure they are legitimate claims before authorizing the bond and raising assessments on all policyholders to pay for them.

Read more

U.S. government will begin granting loan forgiveness to cities devastated by the 2005 hurricanes

Katrina & Rita disaster loans to be forgiven for cities that had operating deficits for three full fiscal years following the storms.

Hurricane warnings coming faster in 2010

Computer and satellite technology has dramatically improved over the years and now the Hurricane Center says it will begin issuing storm watches and warnings about half a day sooner in the biggest change to its warning system in decades.

Here's the story.

Nine of the top 10 disasters in decade were hurricanes!

They caused 255 Billion Dollars of Damage. 

Good quick summary of the International Disaster Database from USAToday

The Dangers of a Quiet Hurricane Season

From the New York Times today....

This is an excellent read. Living in Florida and having now gone through relatively quiet seasons (in comparison to 2004-2005) for several years, you do become complacent.

William Gray predicts 'above average' 2010 hurricane season

Brace yourselves: Here comes another hurricane prediction.

An early forecast for 2010 calls for an “above-average” hurricane season, according to the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University.

The team expects 11 to 16 named storms, 6 to 8 hurricanes and 3 to 5 major hurricanes — ones with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater.

Today’s prediction marks the first time William Gray’s team at CSU has provided a range of storms in its December early season forecast. The report is the team’s 27th year of hurricane seasonal predictions.

Because the report is based on Atlantic basin conditions, the team says its forecast could change substantially by the start of the hurricane season, which runs on June 1 to Nov. 30.

Gray’s team plans to list specific numerical forecasts in its next forecast on April 7.

“The Atlantic basin has the largest year-to-year variability of any of the global tropical cyclone basins,” Phil Klotzbach, the team’s leader, said in a release.

A weakening El Nino will allow more hurricanes to form, the team predicts. El Nino is a pattern of warmer-than-usual water in the Pacific Ocean, near the equator. The pattern creates more wind shear over the Atlantic, which breaks up tropical storms as they form.
“We anticipate the current El Nino event to dissipate by the 2010 hurricane season,” Gray said in the release, “and warm sea surface temperatures are likely to continue being present in the tropical and North Atlantic during 2010 — conditions that contribute to an above-average season.”

Their forecast is based on a statistical prediction scheme that uses 58 years of “hindcast” data. Over that time period, the scheme correctly forecasted above- or below-average seasons in 44 out of 58 years, the team said.

For the 2010 Atlantic basin hurricane season, the CSU hurricane forecast team expects:

# A 64 percent chance that at least one major hurricane will make landfall on the U.S. coastline in 2010. The long-term average probability is 52 percent.

# 40 percent chance (the long-term average is 31 percent) of a major hurricane making landfall along the U.S. East Coast, including the Florida Peninsula.

# A 40 percent chance (the long-term average is 30 percent) of a major hurricane making landfall along the Gulf Coast, from the Florida Panhandle west to Brownsville.

The full report.