Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

kevin.myatt
@roanoke.com
981-3341

Weather with Kevin Myatt

Recent columns

• We got graupel, but not on official record
• Moisture could get caught up in cold blast
• Forecast for Weather Journal: Partly print, with frequent Internet
• Column archive

Read the Weather Journal blog

• Sprinkles or flurries possible Tuesday, but maybe something bigger for the weekend?
• For now, it looks like a quiet, mostly mild week ahead for SW Virginia
• Coldest morning of winter so far likely across much of Southwest Virginia; Tuesday precipitation looking doubtful
• Weather Journal blog

#swvawx on Twitter

@KevinMyattWx

• Follow Kevin on Twitter at @KevinMyattWx

The Atlantic tropical season couldn't wait one more day to get going.

Tropical Storm Arthur formed Saturday in the Caribbean and quickly made landfall on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Sunday was the official start of the Atlantic tropical season, which runs through Nov. 30.

The persistent La Nina pattern -- a stripe of colder-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific -- generally favors the Atlantic hurricane season being more active than normal. La Nina tends to reduce strong convection over the Pacific, thereby also reducing high-level winds from the Pacific that can shear apart developing tropical systems in the Atlantic.

The National Hurricane Center says there is a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of 12 to 16 named storms, including six to nine hurricanes and two to five major hurricanes (110 mph winds or greater). The hurricane center also says that there is a 90 percent chance that this Atlantic season will be near or above the average of 11 named storms.

Hurricane forecasting pioneer William Gray of Colorado State University and his assistant Philip Klotzbach, as of early April, are calling for 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four intense hurricanes.

None of this says anything about how many storms are expected to hit the U.S. An oft-repeated fallacy about last hurricane season was that it was absent in the Atlantic. In fact, 2007 was the first Atlantic tropical season on record, dating to 1851, in which two Category 5 hurricanes made landfall -- both in Mexico.

After extraordinary 2004 and 2005 seasons, the U.S. has been hit by only one hurricane in the past two years.