Hurricane Season 2008

It seems that the Colorado State University experts have put out their predictions for the 2008 hurricane season. It is making headlines. The story also notes that they have been wrong for the past three years. They say there will be seven hurricanes next season. I say there will be six. Why doesn't Reuters come out and interview me?

What we're seeing is that the development of hurricanes depends, as Chaos Theory has shown, on remarkably small variations in conditions that lead to either big storms or fizzles. This is hard to predict at a distance of twelve hours. It is impossible to predict a year in advance. There appear to be some minor correlations with ocean temperatures, which in turn are difficult to predict a year in advance.

The number of tropical storms continues to be above the long term average, which I attribute mostly to better technology. On that basis, we had a slightly more active than usual season in 2007, but as anyone who watched it knows, it was pretty boring. There were in fact far fewer days than normal when there were at least on hurricane active in the North Atlantic.

So to predict a slightly more active than usual season is pretty much to say average with new data gathering. When the weatherman says the chance of rain is 50%, it means he has no clue. Much the same with these "experts."