Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its updated Atlantic Hurricane Outlook. Consistent with the update issued by Phil Klotzbach and Bill Gray earlier this week, NOAA has lowered its projections due, in part, to the developing El Niño. NOAA is now predicting a “50 percent probability of a near-normal season, a 40 percent probability of a below-normal season, and a 10 percent probability of an above-normal season. Forecasters say there is a 70 percent chance of seven to 11 named storms, of which three to six could become hurricanes, including one to two major hurricanes.”>>>MOREAlso from Mr. Mayfield:
August Formation Points
The graphic below shows the formation points of tropical storms during the month of August from the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) historical data set.
August Formation Points 1851 to 2008
The historical data set shows that 349 tropical storms have formed in August from 1851 through 2008. There are certainly a lot more dots on this graphic than we saw in June and July, and we see a lot more initial developments over the tropical Atlantic between the west coast of Africa and the Caribbean.
Before the age of routine satellite coverage started in the mid 1960s, some tropical storms were obviously missed. According to data from the NHC, the Atlantic Basin averages 3.1 tropical storms and 1.6 hurricanes during the month of August in the satellite era....
