THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 27, 1995 TAG: 9511270049
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: 1995 HURRICANE SEASON WRAP-UP
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
How much faith would you put in someone who said a team that had been lackluster for years, performing far below average, would suddenly make the World Series?
That's about what Professor William M. Gray, the guru of hurricane forecasting, did when he predicted that 1995 would be a very busy season for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic even though recent years have been quiet.
Dull, even.
``It took a little bit of gumption,'' Gray conceded when asked if he had been nervous about forecasting an explosion of storm activity.
Not only was Gray right, but even he did not fully envision what would happen as 1995 forged a place for itself in the Hurricane Hall of Fame as the second busiest season on record.
The statistics speak for themselves: 21 tropical depressions; 19 named tropical storms; 11 hurricanes; five major hurricanes and 119 days (out of a 183-day season) on which storms were churning around - at one point, four simultaneously.
``We knew last fall it would likely be a very active season, and it was,'' said Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. ``But no, we couldn't have told you it would be as active as it was.''
Gray has been refining his forecast theory for more than a decade and says he is learning a little more every season. The theory relies on an increasingly complicated and statistically delicate formula that looks at hurricane development as an outgrowth of global weather.
It focuses on a variety of phenomena, among them rainfall in West Africa, the presence or absence of El Nino - a warm water current off the west coast of South America - the direction of the high-altitude winds circling the globe, and barometric pressures and temperatures in the Atlantic.
``People used to focus on just one or two things,'' Gray said. ``But we're learning that there are a lot of predictors; that you must look at this from a global perspective. It's no one thing that explains why this was an active year. It was a number of things.''
Gray said that most every one of more than a dozen primary and secondary predictors favored a busy year.
``There are some years you just don't know, you're not as confident'' in making a forecast, Gray said last week. Not in 1995: ``We were very confident.''
His forecasts are winning converts.
``Each year, we're having a little more respect for his ability to predict the number of storms,'' said Richard Pasch, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
``A lot of us appreciate even more that there are some large scale parameters and indicators that can foretell you are going to have more or less activity,'' Pasch said. ``But we don't want to make too much from number of storms.'' After all, it only takes one to make a disaster.
``There is no established skill in trying to determine if the U.S. is going to get hit by a hurricane a year in advance. Or a week,'' Pasch said. ``We hope the public realizes that, looking ahead, even if you have a lot of storms they don't have to reach land.'' On the other hand, ``you can have very few storms and have several come ashore.''
It's like baseball. A batter may be confident of getting a hit, but he's far less certain where the ball will drop.
This year, Bill Gray hit a grand slam, but had no idea where the ball was going.
Now Gray is preparing his initial forecast for 1996 hurricane activity. ``No way next year can be as active,'' he said.
Gray believes that winds in the upper atmosphere that tend to blow the tops off storms, thereby weakening them, will be stronger next year. Still, he expects 1996 to be busier than 1991 through 1995.
And while there may be fewer storms than this year, Gray cautioned, ``The probability of landfall might be greater.'' ILLUSTRATION: GRADING THE HURRICANE FORECASTER
Even though he had predicted a busier than normal season - and
upped the ante in a subsequent forecast - Prof. William M. Gray
underestimated just how busy it would be in the Atlantic in 1995.
Historical Nov. 30 June 7 Aug. 4 Actual to
average forecast update update Nov. 26
Named
Storms 9.3 12 12 16 19
Hurricanes
5.7 8 8 9 11
Major hurricanes
2.2 3 3 3 5
Named storm days
46.1 65 65 65 120
Hurricane days
23.0 35 35 30 58
Major hurricane days
2.2 3 3 3 5
Net tropical activity
100% 140% 140% 130% 234%
SOURCE: Colorado State University
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE by CNB