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Hurricane season peaks today

NOAA 

Today (Sept. 10) marks the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. From here, the likelihood that tropical storms will form begins to decline. The season runs through November.

That's not to say we can't still have a busy few months. On the chart above, there's an interesting spike in activity in Mid-October. In fact, forecasters expect the backside of this season will be very active.

So far, we've had 7 named storms, 2 of which became hurricanes - both of them (Dean and Felix) making landfall as Category 5 storms. That's never happened before.

National Weather Service forecasters expect a total of 13 to 16 named storms before the season ends, of which 7 to 9 will become hurricanes. If they're right, we have 6 or 7 more named storms (and 5 to 7 hurricanes) to go. Here's the full report.

Phil Klotzbach and William Gray, at Colorado State University, have predicted 15 names storms and 7 hurricanes this season. That would leave 8 named storms and 5 hurricanes to go. Here's their webpage. A link to their latest report is at the upper left hand corner of their main page.

For now, Gabrielle is the only active tropical system on the charts. There is a disturbance in the Atlantic that forecasters are watching. It could become a tropical storm in the next several days. If so, it will be named Humberto.

 

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About the blogger
Frank Roylance is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He came to Baltimore from New Bedford, Mass. in 1980 to join the old Evening Sun. He moved to the morning Sun when the papers merged in 1993, and has spent most of his time since covering science, including astronomy and the weather. One of The Baltimore Sun's first online Web logs, the Weather Blog debuted in October 2004. In June 2006 Frank also began writing comments on local weather and stargazing for The Baltimore Sun's print Weather Page.
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