Hurricane Forecast: Active, But Calmer Than Last Year

MIAMI, April 4 -- The 2006 hurricane season will not be as ferocious as last year's, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, but will still be unusually busy, a noted forecasting team predicted Tuesday.

The Colorado State University team led by William Gray, a pioneer in forecasting storm probabilities, said it expects 17 named storms to form in the Atlantic basin during the six-month season starting in June.

Nine of the storms will probably strengthen into hurricanes, with winds of at least 74 mph, the team said, reaffirming their early prediction in December.

The forecasters said five of the hurricanes are likely to be major storms, reaching at least Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity and boasting winds of at least 111 mph.

But they also said there is less chance of major storms making landfall in the United States compared with the record-breaking 2005 season.

The long-term statistical average is about 10 named storms per season, of which six become hurricanes.

"Even though we expect to see the current active period of Atlantic major hurricane activity to continue for another 15 to 20 years, it is statistically unlikely that the coming 2006-2007 hurricane season, or the seasons that follow, will have the number of major hurricane U.S. landfall events as we have seen in 2004-2005," Gray said in a statement.

Last season -- which, at $80 billion, was the costliest on record in terms of damage -- saw 27 named storms, of which 15 developed into hurricanes.

In addition to Katrina, Hurricane Rita hammered Texas and Hurricane Wilma briefly became the most intense Atlantic hurricane ever observed before hitting the Mexican resort of Cancun and then curving back over South Florida, where it caused $10 billion in damage.