Weather Forecasting

Forecasters reached a consensus last fall, predicting another extremely dry winter in the Southland. Then came the rains, with the latest scattered showers beginning Monday, driving up rainfall totals to levels meteorologists admit look a lot like . . . normal. But don't ask them to revise the dry winter forecast just yet. "I'm sticking with it, even though we have a storm coming in," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.

Frustrated with people and politicians who refuse to listen or learn, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield ends his 34-year government career today in search of a new platform for getting out his unwelcome message: Hurricane Katrina was nothing compared with the big one yet to come. Mayfield, 58, leaves his high-profile job with the National Weather Service more convinced than ever that U.S.

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 celebrity TV weatherman was pretty much invented in Los Angeles. They have names like Dallas Raines and Johnny Mountain, and before them, the avuncular man in the bow tie known to millions simply as Dr. George. Steve Martin mocked this culture in his movie "L.A. Story," in which he plays a weatherman who tapes his forecasts in advance because, well, L.A. has no weather.

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.

Hurricanes and tornadoes have popular rating scales that help people understand their power. Now, weather experts are planning a similar way to measure the El Nino phenomena that affect climate worldwide. The ratings are tentatively expected to begin in the fall, said Wayne Higgins, director of the federal Climate Prediction Center. Higgins said his forecasters also are planning watches and advisories, as is currently done with other severe weather.

In an independent assessment presented at a contentious congressional hearing Thursday, forecasters from Miami's National Hurricane Center called for sweeping changes to boost morale and improve supervision as well as new tools to predict the path and speed of storms. The hurricane center has problems that go deeper than the divisive flap over Bill Proenza, its ousted director, the report indicated.