Still Predicting an Active Season

Apart from Tropical Storm Alberto, the 2006 North Atlantic hurricane season has been pretty slow so far. That's not unexpected; June is never exactly a rockin' month for hurricanes, although last year, July was a rockin' month. So far it's not clear what to expect; I find the best source of day-to-day information on what's happening in the tropics is Jeff Masters' WunderBlog, which I encourage you to check out. Meanwhile, despite the season's relatively slow start, one of the leading forecasting groups, Professors Mark Saunders and Adam Lea's Tropical Storm Risk, continues to predict an active upcoming season, although again, not as active as 2005. Tropical Storm Risk has just released another forecast, and it's actually up slightly from what they put out last month. For the Atlantic, thanks to weaker trade winds and (as always) high sea surface temperatures, they're expecting 14.1 tropical cyclones, 7.7 of which become hurricanes, 3.4 of which become intense hurricanes. You can read the full forecast here (PDF). Finally, Japan is awaiting a strike from Typhoon Ewiniar right now; currently it has 105 knot or 121 mph winds, though it's expected to weaken before landfall as it curves northward over cooler waters. Click here for an impressive satellite image. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center has more on the storm. I will continue to track this coming hurricane season, although thus far, there really hasn't been that much to tell...