Well, 15.9 actually, 7.9 of them hurricanes and 3.5 of them intense hurricanes (Cat 3, 4, 5). See here (PDF). We can now do a comparison with the latest Klotzbach-Gray forecast, which is slighly lower: 15 storms, 7 hurricanes, 3 intense hurricanes. Really, the two aren't that far apart. What's most interesting perhaps is that while the Klotzbach-Gray forecast has clearly come down from numbers that were previously higher (i.e., 17, 9, and 5), the Saunders forecast has fluctuated up and down slightly but with no particular trend. In June, for example, Saunders forecast just 13.9 storms, so that has now gone up again. In essence, all the forecasts--including the May 22 NOAA forecast of 13-16 storms, 8-10 hurricanes, and 4-6 intense hurricanes--are basically hovering in the same range. Which means that we'll learn soon enough whether they're all esentially right, or whether they're all completely wrong. Meanwhile TC Chris is basically dead, but the entire month of August looms ahead of us. Up next: Debby....
P.S.: Saunders and Klotzbach/Gray differ considerably in terms of what goes into the forecasting sausage. While the Colorado State group uses a range of different predictors, Saunders uses just two, which makes the whole outcome strongly dependent on sea surface temperatures. As his forecast explains: "TSR's two predictors are the forecast July-September 2006 trade wind speed over the Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic, and the forecast August-September 2006 sea surface temperature in the tropical North Atlantic. The former influences cyclonic vorticity (the spinning up of storms) in the main hurricane track region, while the latter provides heat and moisture to power incipient storms in the main track region." Here's a question, incidentally: Does anyone know the best place to go to track tropical North Atlantic SST anomalies on a weekly or monthly basis?
