This Storm Cycle Just Getting Warmed Up

As a fitting coda to an extraordinary year that saw a record 13 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin -- including Katrina, which claimed more than 1,300 lives and caused more property damage than any hurricane in U.S. history -- a new, postseason storm was spinning at sea.

Tropical Storm Epsilon, with winds of 65 mph, was boiling late Wednesday in the Atlantic 650 miles east of Bermuda, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

"Mother Nature doesn't always follow our program," said spokesman Frank Lepore.

The just-concluded six-month Atlantic tropical storm season shattered records, many of which had stood for decades, including most named storms, most hurricanes and most Category 5 hurricanes since record-keeping began in 1851.

The National Hurricane Center's website quoted retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, as calling 2005 "arguably

More stormy weather is coming, climatologists said.

"We're 11 years into an active hurricane cycle, and history shows that they last anywhere from 20 to 30, even 40 years at a time," said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md. "We expect high levels of hurricanes -- and hurricane landfalls -- for the next decade or even longer."

"This has been a heck of a season, hasn't it?" said William M. Gray, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who issues a closely watched forecast of annual hurricane activity. "Everything looks like we'll have a very active season next year too."

Most meteorologists agree that the Atlantic Ocean experiences multi-decade cooling and warming cycles, with warmer water spawning increased storm activity since 1995. This year, surface ocean temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees higher than normal, one of the reasons for the frenzied hurricane activity, Bell said.

"We're in an active hurricane era, and people have to come to grips with that," the forecaster said. In the generally quiescent years of 1970-94, there were three active hurricane seasons and, on average, one hurricane made landfall in the United States each year.