You're killing me, Lowell.

Aren't these the same guys who forecasted huge hurricane seasons for the past two years that never materialized.
Last year, for example, they put out this forecast:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
Then they revised it downward three times during the season and still had it overstated.

These guys remind me of the old saying about economics:
"Economists have forecasted 15 of the past four recessions."

;-}

haven't been too good recently.  Although that's a good thing since we've had fewer than expected.  I figure since 2005 caught everyone by surprise they've decided to estimate.

The real question will be the government's response when another big does come along... will that be another (very unfunny) joke like Katrina?

I grew up in Virginia Beach and, later, Myrtle Beach and have expereinced first hand how people get jaded by hurricane false alarms.  That is what is happening now.  If there is a really big one, will people remember Katrina and get the hell out of the way or just shrug and decide to "ride it out?"

I have never seen an accurate hurricane forecast for the entire season and I think that these folks are over-extrapolating data.  Sure, every now and then they might get close, but not very often.  When they do give an accurate forecast, it is based on the same mathematical model that makes a stopped clock right every twelve hours.

Its mid April, the winds are still too strong for tropical weather formation.

With Rising Kanes permission, here are some sites that tell about hurricanes

http://www.stormcarib.com/
( A blog  of weather folks on the Islands)

The palm beach Post  has great coverage{As yu might expect}
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/s...

try http://www.mpittweather.com/

http://www.crownweather.com/tr...

Lots of neat  computer charts

http://tropicalupdate.com/     Joe Bastardi posts to this

Wunderground's Dr. Jeff Masters does a great job of covering tropical weather.

http://www.wunderground.com/bl...

I lived in Florida during the 1980s, a relatively quiet time for hurricanes.  On the one hand, veterans of past hurricane seasons always walked around with a sense of impending doom muttering, "We're due for the big one."

Newcomers like me didn't take them seriously.  And too many false alarms were a problem.  Each time the alarm was sounded, people did not take it seriously.  Each time it turned out to be a false warning, it confirmed for people that weather forecasters were exaggerating.

The problem is that weather forecasting has a lot of uncertainty.  Like modern medicine, it's still as much art as science.  And if you get it wrong and miss "the big one" the results could be even more horrific than what we saw with Katrina.

All that said, the reason the past two hurricane seasons were quiet was because of a weather pattern known as the Southern Oscillation - or El Nino.

El Ninos typically begin in the Pacific in December, which is why they are called El Nino - or "The Child." They flip the weather pattern so that areas that would normally have a wet season, suddenly experience droughts (the life threatening droughts in Ethiopia in the 1980s began with El Ninos).  Dry seasons would suddenly find themselves overwhelmed with storms and flooding.  It would also be unseasonably warm or unseasonably cold - any of this sound familiar, like we've experienced some of these strange weather patterns right here in Virginia?

Finally, El Ninos cause something called Bermuda highs, very strong high pressure systems, to settle over Florida and the Southeast and to remain there for longer than usual.  Those Bermuda highs act like wind shear, shearing off the tops of tropical storms before they can form.

That's why Florida has had so few hurricanes since 2005.  The El Nino of 2006-2007 has been confirmed by metereologists and is believed to have been responsible for drought conditions in Florida for a couple of winters.

Once the El Nino fades, which usually is within a year or two, conditions favorable to an active hurricane season return.