Hurricanes: Fiona brewing?
The sixth named tropical storm of the season very likely by week’s end.
During a hurricane season that was off to a particularly quiet start, Bill Gray, the late hurricane-forecasting legend, said that he used to set his alarm for Aug. 20.
That typically was when the storms started bounding off the African west coast, and the Atlantic Basin hurricane season got cooking.
The National Hurricane Center is saying that it's highly likely that a disturbance off the African coast will become the sixth named storm – one with peak winds of at least 39 m.p.h. – by Saturday, the 20th.
With the storm approaching what it calls a "favorable" environment, It puts the likelihood at 70 percent that Fiona will form by sometime Saturday, and 80 percent by Sunday.
Climatologically, the Atlantic season is well ahead of pace. The basin, which includes the Gulf and Caribbean, already has had five named storms. On average, that doesn't happen until Aug. 31.
In addition, two hurricanes have formed. Normally, that wouldn't occur until Aug. 28. The Atlantic season typically peaks around Sept. 10.
Despite the early numbers, so far this been a gentle season for the United States. It has included a rare January hurricane, Alex, and Earl, basically a fish storm that stayed out to sea.
The consensus forecasts, including the government's; the one by Gray's Colorado State University protégé, Phil Klotzbach; and AccuWeather Inc.'s, all are calling for an average to above-average season, which would mean six hurricanes.
Early activity doesn't necessarily foreshadow what is to come.
Gray made his Aug. 20 comment back in 1999. The following month, an storm formed off the West African coast that would become the sixth tropical storm of that season and, eventually, Hurricane Floyd.
Floyd would be blamed directly for 56 deaths in the United States, and its remnants wrung out as much as 13 inches of rain in the Philadelphia region, producing one of the scariest days in the region's weather history.