THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9412090579
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
All over the world, a witch's brew of violent weather has begun to simmer. This week, a long-range storm forecaster said he expects next summer will boil over into the worst Atlantic Coast hurricane season in many years.
``Information through mid-November indicates that 1995 Atlantic hurricane activity is likely to be above average with eight hurricanes - three of them intense,'' said Dr. William Mason Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.
``The probability of hurricane destruction along the U.S. coastline and within the Caribbean basin for 1995 is higher than the mean probability for the last 45 years - and distinctly higher than the probabilities for the last four years,'' said Gray in the first of his 1995 season weather evaluations.
Gray has won international attention for a forecasting formula that predicts with surprising accuracy the size and number of great tropical storms that annually take aim at the East Coast, where the Outer Banks stick out like a thumbed nose.
All of Gray's long-range indicators are pointing to a more active hurricane season next summer, he said.
The scientist warned that a sudden return of the whirling storms could bring trouble to coastal communities that have been lulled by several years of relative hurricane inactivity.
The most significant change in hurricane weather-makers is the decline of El Nino, a vast dome of warm mid-Pacific water that moves east in roughly biennial cycles to lap along the shores of South America, particularly Peru. The first onset of an El Nino is usually around Yuletime, hence the Spanish name for the Christmas Child.
When a strong El Nino, which means the water dome is close to the Pacific Coast, plus drought conditions in West Africa, plus prevailing easterly winds in the upper atmosphere are all plugged into Gray's weather formula, the resulting prediction calls for few hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. Such climate patterns have prevailed for the past several years.
But all that is expected to change by next summer's hurricane season, Gray said.
``It appears that, at long last, we will have a break to this most unusual five-year warm El Nino event,'' said Gray.
``It is expected that El Nino-like equatorial Pacific warm water conditions will finally dissipate and that cool surface water conditions will return . .
For the past two seasons, Gray has had to modify his long-range predictions when El Nino refused to go away and thus end a low-hurricane cycle.
A year ago, Gray initially predicted six hurricanes for the 1994 season that ended Nov. 1. But when El Nino hung on stubbornly along the South American coast, he dropped the forecast to five storms, and then four. There were actually three named hurricanes this year - Chris, Aug. 16-23; Florence, Nov. 4-9; and late-blooming Gordon, Nov. 10-20.
Only Gordon did notable damage to the North Carolina coast. The storm pirouetted off Cape Hatteras for several days, sending damaging winds and swells ashore, particularly at Kitty Hawk, before heading back down south as a dying tropical storm.
When he factors in all of his signs and portents, Gray said the overall Atlantic storm outlook for the 1995 summer season should turn out like this:
Hurricanes: eight
Intense hurricanes: three (storms with maximum winds of at least 111 miles per hour)
Hurricane days: 35. For more than a month next summer, Gray thinks than an Atlantic hurricane will be on the chart someplace.
Intense hurricane days: eight
Destruction potential: 138. That means damage could be about one-third greater than the baseline of 100, which is the mean storm damage from 1950 and 1993.
Gray said he and his weather science support team at Colorado State University had fine-tuned their hurricane formula to make it more accurate.
And he added a cautionary:
``The forecast does not specifically predict where the (1995) Atlantic basin storms will strike,'' Gray said. He said he thought there would be more hurricanes in low latitudes, such as the Caribbean.
But Gray emphasized that the changing global weather-makers he is monitoring are beginning to resemble those of previous periods of ``average intense hurricane activity like that of the 1940s through the 1960s.''
For years, Gray's lonely number-crunching in the Colorado mountains was ignored by U.S. scientists at the National Hurricane Center. But as his predictions began to track step-by-step with subsequent weather reality, Gray became an honored speaker at international meetings of meteorologists.
It hasn't bothered his sometimes puckish sense of humor.
On the cover sheet of this week's first prediction for the 1995 hurricane season, Gray in large type includes this ``admonition:''
Never, No matter what may be the progress of science,
Will honest men who have regard for their reputations
Venture to predict the weather. ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON/Staff
The rubble of destroyed homes covers the beach in Kitty Hawk during
Hurricane Gordon last month.
HURRICANES AND BASEBALL
Dr. William Mason Gray, the Colorado State University weather
scientist who is not afraid to predict next year's hurricanes, is
also a baseball fan. Without comment, he included the following
preamble to this year's long-range forecast:
HURRICANES, THE WORLD SERIES, AND THE FIELD OF DREAMS: The World
Series was canceled this year. It was also canceled in 1904 when
John McGraw's Giants refused to play Boston. Both years
were very low in hurricanes (Two in 1904; three this year) - as was
1901 (Three hurricanes) and 1902 (three hurricanes) The only
other years that the series was not played since the establishment
of both Major Leagues.
``CANCEL IT AND THEY (HURRICANES) WILL GO''
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE EXPERT by CNB