The consensus forecast for the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season is pointing increasingly towards an unusually active season, with Andover, MA-based WSI Corp. now calling for 18 named storms, including 10 hurricanes, five of them intense (Category Three or greater). The hurricane season, which officially begins Tuesday (June 1), will be “hyperactive” with a magnified threat to the Northeast United States, the forecaster said.

The primary drivers for tropical activity have reversed course since last year and “everything is in place for an incredibly active season,” according to WSI seasonal forecaster Todd Crawford. “The El Nino event has vanished completely, resulting in a decrease in western tropical Pacific convection and a concomitant decrease in the vertical wind shear that typically acts as a detriment to tropical Atlantic development. More importantly, however, eastern and central tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures are currently at record warm levels for May, even warmer than the freakishly active season of 2005.

“While we’ve increased our forecast numbers in both of the last two monthly updates, we are still more likely to raise than lower these numbers going forward. At this time, there is no strong argument to rebut the bold assertion that this season will at least approach the record 2005 levels of activity.”

A total of 26 named storms, including 14 hurricanes and seven intense hurricanes, among them hurricanes Katrina and Rita, wreaked havoc on the oil and natural gas industry, onshore and in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), during the 2005 season (see Daily GPI, Dec. 7, 2005).

The coastal United States from North Carolina’s Outer Banks north to Maine is twice as likely as normal to be hit by a hurricane this year, according to the WSI forecast.

“Our model suggests that the threat to the Northeast coast this season is on par with that in Florida and the Gulf coastal states,” Crawford said.

It was the second time WSI has increased its 2010 forecast. In a preliminary forecast issued in January WSI called for 13 named storms, including seven hurricanes, with three of them intense, would form this year (see Daily GPI, Jan. 27). Last month WSI increased its forecast to include 16 named storms, including nine hurricanes, five of them intense (see Daily GPI, April 21). WSI’s updated forecast numbers are well above the 1950-2009 average of 10 named storms, six hurricanes and three intense hurricanes and slightly above the more recent 1995-2009 average of 14 named storms, eight hurricanes and four intense hurricanes. Nine named storms formed during 2009, including three hurricanes, two of them intense.

AccuWeather.com Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi has said rapid GOM warming and a collapsing El Nino pattern in the Pacific could create 16-18 named storms during the Atlantic hurricane season, which would make 2010 one of the most active seasons on record (see Daily GPI, May 20). Bastardi’s forecast team expects one or two tropical storms to form by early July and a total of at least six storms to impact the U.S. coastline before the season ends Nov. 30.

Bastardi’s latest hurricane forecast is largely unchanged from his initial prognostication in March (see Daily GPI, March 11) and is generally inline with recent forecasts issued by scientists at Colorado State University (see Daily GPI, April 8) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (see Daily GPI, Feb. 8). NOAA is scheduled to release an updated hurricane outlook on Thursday.

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