Who's Heard This Before?

I have.

To promote panic mode, the article just about ends thusly:

"The devastating 2005 season set a record with 28 named storms, 15 of them hurricanes. Four of those hurricanes hit the U.S. coast, the worst among them Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and leveled parts of the Gulf Coast region."

We get it - Katrina was bad. Can we move on (even though New Orleans hasn't)?

Here is what scientist William Gray, quoted in the AP piece, predicted last year. Naturally, the AP doesn't mention how far off Gray was, merely saying that "last year, Gray's forecast and government forecasts were higher than what the Atlantic hurricane season produced."

But here's the breakdown:

Gray's 2006 prediction - major storms: 5
hurricanes :9
tropical storms: 17

actual 2006 Atlantic hurricane season - major storms: 2
hurricanes: 5
tropical storms: 10

Gray also "calculate[d] an 81 percent chance that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coast in 2006. " That didn't happen, either.

The National Hurricane Center got it wrong in 2006, too.

More scare tactics from Reuters, with gloomier predictions:

"The Atlantic hurricane season will be exceptionally active this year, according to a British forecasting group, raising the possibility that killer storms like Hurricane Katrina could again threaten the United States."

I guess we'll see how it all plays out - but I'm not putting too much credence into these predictions...