Stormy Weather: Weather Service Predicts Active Hurricane Season [News]

Friday, May 30, 2008 - 12:28 in Earth & Climate

The U.S. National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center forecasts six to nine hurricanes--including as many as five major hurricanes with wind speeds above 111 miles (179 kilometers) per hour--this six-month season in the Atlantic, which officially begins on Sunday and ends November 30. Independent experts at Colorado State University in Fort Collins foresee much the same, making this a more active year than most for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic and Caribbean.The total prediction calls for as many as 16 "named" storms, those whose winds reach more than 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour. If one is born in the Atlantic Ocean or east of the international date line in the Pacific, it is called a hurricane; in the northwest Pacific, a typhoon; in the southwest Pacific and southeastern Indian oceans, such a storm is dubbed a severe tropical cyclone; in the north Indian, a severe cyclonic storm; and in the southwest Indian, a tropical cyclone. By any name, one of these storms can carry as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs--making them nature's most destructive meteorologic phenomenon. [More]

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