Climatologist's Predicts Very Active Season

[skywarn]

Climatologist Cliff Harris and Meteorologist Randy Mann of Harris-Mann Long Range Climatology has issued their 2008 Hurricane Forecast. They like others are also trending for an active season. For the 2008 season they are forecasting 18-21 named storms with twelve of them becoming hurricanes. Four of which are expected to become majors. They have issued the highest numbers so far in a 2008 forecast.

http://www.longrangeweather.com/Article ... ricane.htm

[RL3AO]

Four majors seems pretty low for a 12 cane season. But who am I to rain on their forecast.

[loro-rojo]

18-21 storms seems very high...

[sunnyday]

Sounds like last year....

[MiamiensisWx]

This outlook is nonsensical. It is a carbon copy of the outlooks that were largely off the mark in 2006 and 2007.

A season with 18-21 NS and 10 hurricanes is basically on par with the extremely anomalous 1995 and 2005 seasons. That should not be expected even in multi-year La Nina seasons. In fact, studies have demonstrated that many Nina seasons are rarely "hyperactive" with more than 15 NS, though they are typically above average. Additionally, the projected ratio of intense hurricanes versus hurricanes and total NS is far too low. This outlook can be basically dismissed as garbage. A realistic mean number for the 2008 season would be 13-15 NS, 7-9 hurricanes, and 3-4 intense (major) tropical cyclones.

There are some outlooks (see http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/) that should be taken more seriously than others in terms of credibility and accuracy.

[Ptarmigan]

This outlook is nonsensical. It is a carbon copy of the outlooks that were largely off the mark in 2006 and 2007.

A season with 18-21 NS and 10 hurricanes is basically on par with the extremely anomalous 1995 and 2005 seasons. That should not be expected even in multi-year La Nina seasons. In fact, studies have demonstrated that many Nina seasons are rarely "hyperactive" with more than 15 NS, though they are typically above average. Additionally, the projected ratio of intense hurricanes versus hurricanes and total NS is far too low. This outlook can be basically dismissed as garbage. A realistic mean number for the 2008 season would be 13-15 NS, 7-9 hurricanes, and 3-4 intense (major) tropical cyclones.

There are some outlooks (see http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/) that should be taken more seriously than others in terms of credibility and accuracy.

1995 and 2005 were Neutral ENSO. Same with 1933. La Nina season to have higher ratio of major hurricanes to hurricanes and tropical storms forming. Also, they tend to be longer lasting, which results in higher ACE. 1999 comes to mind, in which 12 storms formed and 5 major hurricanes formed.

[MiamiensisWx]

This forecasting firm (http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/) was the only meteorological service that nailed the total numbers in 2006 and 2007. Their totals were very close to the final results for these seasons.

[Derek Ortt]

the numbers COULD be reasonable.

Without reading their forecast, it seems as if they are thinking more of either an intense northern latitude season, whcih would produce high numbers of TS and cat 1-2 with few 3-5s, or storms forming near the coastline

[MiamiensisWx]

the numbers COULD be reasonable.

Without reading their forecast, it seems as if they are thinking more of either an intense northern latitude season, whcih would produce high numbers of TS and cat 1-2 with few 3-5s, or storms forming near the coastline

That's nearly identical to 2005. Personally, I believe we may observe more development further east, resulting in higher ACE because of greater Cape Verde development than 2007. Regardless, I do not doubt that we will still observe some systems develop in the Caribbean and other locations closer to land masses, which often occurs in nearly every season. The main point is that 2005 featured far greater numbers of homegrown development than most seasons, including above average ones.

[hurricanetrack]

WX Research Center nailed 2006 and 2007 huh? Very good for them.

What about 2004:

http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/hur2004.htm (Jan 2004)

http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/2004hurpress.htm (March 2004)

Um, not good at all.

And how about 2005:

Missed it by 18 named storms and 10 hurricanes-

http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/hur2005.htm

It looks like they say almost the same thing every year- a low number of named storms and about the 100 year avg for hurricanes. You keep saying the same thing over and over and eventually you will be right.

And what of their predictions for 2008? Playing the averages again with 11/6/3.

[wxman57]

This forecasting firm (http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/) was the only meteorological service that nailed the total numbers in 2006 and 2007. Their totals were very close to the final results for these seasons.

If you look at their forecasts back to the 1980s, their OCSI (solar-based) scheme does not allow for the prediction of more than 11 named storms in a season. Check out their verification links, the forecast is always for between 6 and 11 named storms. Even out to 2013, no more than 11 named storms in a season are forecast. For 2007, their OCSI method predicted only 7 named storms (there were 15). That's not very close in terms of the number. Their method considers only natural solar cycles, so they can make a forecast out to 100 years if they want to.

[Ed Mahmoud]

This forecasting firm (http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/) was the only meteorological service that nailed the total numbers in 2006 and 2007. Their totals were very close to the final results for these seasons.

If you look at their forecasts back to the 1980s, their OCSI (solar-based) scheme does not allow for the prediction of more than 11 named storms in a season. Check out their verification links, the forecast is always for between 6 and 11 named storms. Even out to 2013, no more than 11 named storms in a season are forecast. For 2007, their OCSI method predicted only 7 named storms (there were 15). That's not very close in terms of the number. Their method considers only natural solar cycles, so they can make a forecast out to 100 years if they want to.

On a different thread, I linked to something on their web page where they claim they were dead on correct for 2007, and NHC named too many storms that weren't really tropical. I think they only accept abso-tively positively tropical systems of tropical origin, and are completely tropical.

[NDG]

This outlook is nonsensical. It is a carbon copy of the outlooks that were largely off the mark in 2006 and 2007.

A season with 18-21 NS and 10 hurricanes is basically on par with the extremely anomalous 1995 and 2005 seasons. That should not be expected even in multi-year La Nina seasons. In fact, studies have demonstrated that many Nina seasons are rarely "hyperactive" with more than 15 NS, though they are typically above average. Additionally, the projected ratio of intense hurricanes versus hurricanes and total NS is far too low. This outlook can be basically dismissed as garbage. A realistic mean number for the 2008 season would be 13-15 NS, 7-9 hurricanes, and 3-4 intense (major) tropical cyclones.

There are some outlooks (see http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/) that should be taken more seriously than others in terms of credibility and accuracy.

They (WRC) sure did, except for the total number of storms, their forecast came true of giving TX the highest percentage (15 percentage points above their climatology) of a landfalling storm for the US in 2007.

[NDG]

This forecasting firm (http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/) was the only meteorological service that nailed the total numbers in 2006 and 2007. Their totals were very close to the final results for these seasons.

If you look at their forecasts back to the 1980s, their OCSI (solar-based) scheme does not allow for the prediction of more than 11 named storms in a season. Check out their verification links, the forecast is always for between 6 and 11 named storms. Even out to 2013, no more than 11 named storms in a season are forecast. For 2007, their OCSI method predicted only 7 named storms (there were 15). That's not very close in terms of the number. Their method considers only natural solar cycles, so they can make a forecast out to 100 years if they want to.

On a different thread, I linked to something on their web page where they claim they were dead on correct for 2007, and NHC named too many storms that weren't really tropical. I think they only accept abso-tively positively tropical systems of tropical origin, and are completely tropical.

But if that was to be true, why would they mention TS Barry's landfall verification, obviously they thought that it came from tropical origens even if it was highly sheared, if they mentioned it. So if they considered Barry, then there were at least 12 named storms in 2007 that were no less tropical than Barry, way more than their forecast.
http://www.wxresearch.org/press/2007hurver.pdf