Hurricanes

Atlantic Ocean hurricane activity this year may be as much as 75% above the historical average as warm water provides fuel for storms, London-based forecasters at Tropical Storm Risk said Wednesday. The forecasters estimated 17 tropical storms would form, with nine reaching hurricane force and four of those becoming major hurricanes with winds topping 111 mph. As many as five storms, including two hurricanes, may make landfall in the U.S., according to the forecast.

The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season will probably be "very active" with 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes, five of them major, storm forecasters William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach said Tuesday. They said there was a 74% chance that a major hurricane, with sustained winds greater than 110 mph, would strike the U.S. coast between northern Maine and South Texas. That prediction is higher than the long-term average of 52%.

It can portray a hurricane in stunning detail. It's powered by a supercomputer that can perform 14 trillion calculations a second. And starting in June, it should help tropical meteorologists project whether a storm will arrive as a killer or a cream puff. The sophisticated model could be the tool forecasters have long sought to sharply improve their hurricane intensity predictions and give emergency managers and residents more time to prepare accordingly.

A satellite crucial to developing hurricane forecasts is past its life expectancy and could die at any time. U.S. Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) said Monday that he planned to make federal funding for its replacement a top priority. "It's totally unacceptable, with what this country's been through, that we won't have all the necessary forecasting equipment available to us," Klein said.

Hurricane forecasters expect more tropical storms than normal this season, and "it just takes one to make it a bad year," Conrad C. Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Tuesday. National Weather Service forecasters said they expected 13 to 17 tropical storms, with seven to 10 of them becoming hurricanes and three to five of them in the strong category. NOAA is the weather service's parent agency.

Many people along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts still lack a hurricane survival plan and don't feel vulnerable to storms, despite Hurricane Katrina's dramatic damage and pleas from emergency officials for residents to prepare before the season starts, according to a poll released Thursday.

A surge in major Atlantic hurricanes over the last decade -- often cited as evidence of increasing global warming -- may not be a surge at all but a return to normal storm patterns, according to a new study. Using nearly three centuries of hurricane history recorded in organic storm debris encased in coral reefs, researchers found that the frequency of major hurricanes today was about the same as it was during extended periods from the mid-1700s to the mid-1900s.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned that the nation's largest city needed to be prepared for a hurricane powerful enough to cause serious flooding in Lower Manhattan and elsewhere in the city. "It's always a little odd being in New York and talking about hurricanes," Chertoff said after touring a new command center at the Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn. The city typically experiences a hurricane about every 90 years.

A powerful typhoon raced up the Japanese archipelago today, threatening Tokyo. Typhoon Man-Yi injured dozens, cutting power and snarling transportation, clocking sustained wind speeds of more than 130 mph as it passed Kyushu island.

Homeowners filed applications in large numbers ahead of a midnight deadline to request government compensation for damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Nearly two years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, authorities have been heavily criticized for being slow to settle claims and hand out payments while much of the city sits damaged and deserted.