The Gulf Coast from Brownsville, TX, to Spring Hill, FL, hasbeen hit by 34 intense hurricanes this century, and there’s a highprobability one could make an unwelcome visit in 1998.

In his first look at hurricane landfall probabilities, esteemedhurricane forecaster William Gray of Colorado State University saidthe Gulf Coast region is 14% more likely to suffer through anintense hurricane (category 3, 4, or 5) and 16% more likely to behit by a lower level cyclone this year than the average landfallprobability over the past 98 years.

Florida and the East Coast are 44% more likely to get whacked bya big one this year than the 98-year average, Gray said. SouthFlorida has the highest probability of landfalling intensehurricanes, according to the report. The U.S. coast fromSpringhill, FL, to Eastport, ME, has been hit 38 times by category3-5 hurricanes so far this century. The landfalls have covered onlyabout half the overall coastline, but sustained gale force windstypically extend up to 300 miles on either side of the landfalllocation. To obtain probability estimates for gale force windsoccurring at coastal locations this year, the probabilities forhurricane landfalls should be multiplied by a factor of 3-5,according to CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Science.

In an earlier forecast, Gray said he expected this year’sAtlantic hurricane activity to be “appreciably more than 1997 butless than the unusually active 1995 and 1996 seasons. Still, 1998should be significantly more active than the average of thegenerally suppressed hurricane seasons during the last 25 years andespecially in comparison to the particularly quiet seasons of1991-1994.” Predicted for this year’s season are 10 named storms,50 storm days, six hurricanes, 25 hurricane days, two intensehurricanes, four intense hurricane days and a hurricane destructionpotential of 70.

A named storm is a hurricane or tropical storm. A hurricane is atropical cyclone with sustained low-level winds of 74 miles perhour or greater. A hurricane day is a measure of hurricaneactivity, one unit of which occurs as four six-hour periods duringwhich a tropical cyclone is observed or estimated to have hurricaneintensity winds. An intense hurricane reaches a sustained low-levelwind of at least 111 miles per hour at some point in its lifetime.This constitutes a “category 3” or “major” hurricane. An intensehurricane day is four six-hour periods during which a hurricane hascategory 3 intensity or higher. Hurricane destruction potential isa measure of a hurricane’s potential for wind and storm surgedestruction defined as the sum of the square of a hurricane’smaximum wind speed for each six-hour period of its existence.

Rocco Canonica

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