Forecaster predicts busy 2006 US hurricane season

LONDON (Reuters) – The United States and Caribbean, which
are still trying to rebuild from this year’s devastating
storms, should brace themselves for another busy hurricane
season in 2006, a leading windstorm forecaster has warned.

The United States is still counting the cost of hurricanes
Katrina, Rita and Wilma, which ravaged the Gulf Coast and may
cost insurers up to $70 billion, but could face further
devastation next year, London-based forecaster Tropical Storm
Risk (TSR) said in a statement issued on Tuesday evening.

But it soothed anxieties that 2006 may see a repeat of this
year.

“Despite the forecast for another active hurricane season
in 2006, the chance of seeing as many as five intense
hurricanes in the Gulf (as happened in 2005) is extremely
remote,” said Professor Mark Saunders, TSR’s lead scientist.

In its long-range forecast for next year TSR predicts an
above-normal Atlantic hurricane season with a strong
probability that more hurricanes will slam into the United
States than usual, based on average figures for the period
between 1950 and 2005.

It predicts five tropical storms striking the U.S., of
which two will be hurricanes, while it forecasts two tropical
storms will hit the Caribbean, of which one will be a
hurricane.

TSR said its forecast is based on two factors that combine
to produce an above-average number of hurricanes.

These are weaker than normal trade winds, which blow
westwards across the tropical Atlantic ocean and Caribbean sea,
and warmer than normal sea temperatures between West Africa and
the Caribbean, where many hurricanes develop.

TSR, whose long-range outlooks for the past three years
have proven accurate, is sponsored by the reinsurance broker
Benfield Group, the insurer Royal & SunAlliance and claims
assessor Crawford & Co.