The official start of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season is still two and a half months away, but the first spring forecast - this one from AccuWeather.com - is out today.

Joe Bastardi, chief long-range forecaster for the private weather service, says he expects fewer storms to develop this year compared with 2008. And fewer of the storms that do pop up, he says, will make landfall in the U.S.

That's not to say it will be a quiet year. Bastardi is still looking for an "active" season compared with long-term averages. But if he's right, it should be a slower hurricane season than we saw last year.

"This year's forecast shows only half as many impacts on the United States as there were last year," he said in a release. "But keep in mind, it only takes one major hurricane hitting a highly populated area to have a devastating impact." (That's flooding in Maryland from Isabel in 2003 at left.)

Bastardi is forecasting a total of 13 named storms in 2009, down from the 16 recorded in 2008 and close to the long-term average. Of those 13 storms, he expects 8 will reach hurricane force (the same as last year) but only 2 will become "major" (Cat. 3 or higher) storms.

Only four storms would reach the U.S. coast, if Bastardi's estimates prove accurate. That's half as many as made it last season. He says three of those would make landfall as hurricanes, and one would strike at Cat. 3 or higher - one more than last year.

The AccuWeather.com hurricane forecast calls for "probably less" activity this year in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico compared with 2008, but "probably more" activity in the western Atlantic, closer to the U.S. East Coast.

Bastardi has been predicting for years that the East Coast is overdue for a major hurricane. He believes the conditions of the atmosphere and the ocean today are analogous to those in the early 1950s, a decade of major East Coast storms.

"I think along the Eastern Seaboard that we're getting into that period that was right up their alley [in the '50s]," he says in the AccuWeather interview linked below. "In the 1950s, the roadmap of hurricanes was up the East Coast ... We're in the '50s now."

Among the factors Bastardi considered in reaching his forecast estimates:

* A shift, in the mid-to-late portion of the season - from a weak La Nina to a weak El Nino in the tropical Pacific Ocean. El Nino events - above-average warming of the surface waters of the eastern and central tropical Pacific - are associated with decreased hurricane activity in the Atlantic. 

* Stronger easterly trade winds off northern Africa. These winds typically carry dry air and dust out over the hurricane nursery region of the Atlantic, suppressing development.

* Cooler water in the "deep tropical Atlantic." This, he says, could lead to reduced activity and intensity of Atlantic storms

* Continuation of a multi-decadal pattern - established in 1995 - that leads to higher-than average hurricane activity overall.

For a video presentation of Bastardi's forecast, click here.

Stay tuned for the annual forecasts from the Colorado State University team of Phil Klotzbach and William Gray, due out in April, and the official government prediction, in May. The season opens June 1 and lasts through the end of November.