Colorado State Increases Estimate of Named Atlantic Storms for 2014 Season

Colorado State University increased the number of storms it expects to develop during the Atlantic hurricane season to 10 from nine.

The forecast calls for four of those to become hurricanes, one of them a major system, said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of the outlook. In April, his team predicted three hurricanes, with one growing into a major storm.

“We raised the number slightly because El Nino isn’t coming on as strong as we thought,” Klotzbach said by telephone today. “We’re still pretty confident it will be a quiet season.”

Atlantic hurricanes can disrupt U.S. and Mexican natural gas and oil production and affect refineries and agriculture. An estimated $10.6 trillion of insured coastal property in 18 states from Maine to Texas is vulnerable to storm strikes, according to the Insurance Information Institute in New York.

The 30-year average is for the Atlantic to produce 12 storms during the season that runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Currently, an area of disturbed weather in the Bay of Campeche, in the southern Gulf of Mexico, has a 10% chance in the next five days of becoming the season’s first storm, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.