Meteorologists examining the conditions that spawned hurricanes Rita and Katrina say there is a strong likelihood that another intense hurricane will occur in October.
And while late-season storms tend to track eastward toward Florida or don't make landfall at all, the experts don't rule out the possibility of another major storm targeting the battered Gulf Coast.
Researchers also warn that the country should brace for 10 to 40 more years of powerful storms because of a natural ocean cycle in the midst of the most active hurricane period on record.
"This has been the seventh hyperactive year since 1995," Stan Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said this month. "Not every year is going to be like this one, but there's going to be plenty of active years to come."
The hurricane season does not end until Nov. 30, and a forecast group is predicting that October will see two hurricanes, one of them reaching Category 3, 4 or 5. The chance of that storm making landfall in the United States is estimated at 21%, said Philip J. Klotzbach, a member of the tropical storm forecasting team led by William M. Gray of Colorado State University.
Klotzbach's forecast does not address where hurricanes make landfall or whether the Gulf Coast could be hit again. "It's a tricky business tracking where these storms are going to go," he said. "That's governed a lot more by day-to-day weather."
Goldenberg said he "would not be surprised" if the Gulf Coast was hit again, because the same conditions that nudged Rita and Katrina toward the region are in place. Goldenberg, who helps develop NOAA's early-season forecasts, said he expected at least one to three more storms, including a major hurricane. Hurricane forecasters have their eye on a weather disturbance in the tropics that "could be Hurricane Stan," he added.
"This season is not over," said Goldenberg, whose Florida home was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. "If I was in the Gulf Coast right now, I'd prepare. Even a tropical storm could do a lot of damage."
Historical patterns show it would be unusual but not impossible for the Gulf Coast to be hit with a major October storm. In the fall, most tropical storms that form near the Bahamas, as Rita and Katrina did, are steered north by weather patterns that deflect them harmlessly out to sea, toward the Bahamas or either coast of Florida, said Christopher W. Landsea, a hurricane researcher with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
