Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Forecasting Smackdown?

Throughout the spring and into summer, I've pointed out repeatedly that there has been a consensus, among seasonal hurricane forecasters, that there will be an active season this year in the Atlantic. 17 named storms was Bill Gray's number; NOAA said 13-17. Methodologically, both Gray and NOAA use a "statistical" forecasting technique: In other words, they get these numbers based upon correlations between various climatological factors (and particularly El Nino) and the number of storms that appeared in past seasons. But there is another, newer type of forecasting: Dynamical seasonal prediction, which uses multiple climate model runs to determine the number of tropical storms that will appear (hurricane-like storms in the models are taken as a guide to real life storm activity even though they are only rough analogues at best). This type of work has been pioneered in Europe. And last year, the dynamical models clearly beat the statistical ...