THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 9, 1994 TAG: 9408090388
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Dr. William Mason Gray, the Colorado State University hurricane handicapper, sent coastal North Carolina and Virginia a less foreboding forecast Monday, saying the odds now call for fewer storms this summer than he previously predicted.
Gray said there will be only four big blows in the Atlantic in 1994, instead of the five he forecast in June. Four hurricanes would represent only a little more than half of the tropical storm activity that would occur in a normal year, he said.
Gray's increasingly accurate but seemingly off-the-wall forecasts have won him the sometimes reluctant admiration of meteorologists at the National Weather Service Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla.
To calculate annual hurricane frequency, Gray combines such factors as drought in West Africa, high altitude winds, and the presence or absence of El Nino's warm waters along the west coast of South America.
He said that the continuing drought in West Africa should definitely slow hurricane formations.
But the Colorado State scientist emphasizes he doesn't know where this year's four forecast storms will hit, nor does he say when.
``There will be one severe hurricane and one intense hurricane day, or four six-hour periods when storm winds reach 111 mph or greater,'' Gray said in his revised forecast for the storm season that began June 1 and runs through November.
Gray's hurricane handicapping has improved in the past decade as he has fine-tuned his formula.
``The six forecasts for 1985, '86, '87, '88, '91 and '92 were quite accurate,'' Gray said this week. But relatively poor results in other hurricane predictions, notably last year when he expected seven and only four developed, caused Gray to pay much more attention to the ebb and flow of El Nino.
Gray has decided that El Nino's steamy currents create a vast Caribbean weather cauldron that eventually boils up into a stratospheric rain-cloud brew that helps hurricanes form off the coast of Africa.
However, effects of the continuing El Nino this summer are showing signs of dissipating, Gray said.
But the ``persistent drought'' in West Africa and global wind patterns in the stratosphere remain reasons enough to lower the number of hurricanes he expects this summer, Gray said.
KEYWORDS: HURRICANES
by CNB