The Atlantic Hurricane season starts today. Here are the designations to be used for named tropical storms in the Atlantic for this year:
Andrea
Barry
Chantal
Dean
Erin
Felix
Gabrielle
Humberto
Ingrid
Jerry
Karen
Lorenzo
Melissa
Noel
Olga
Pablo
Rebekah
Sebastien
Tanya
Van
Wendy
RSS feeds for tropical storm info in the Atlantic and Pacific at:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index-at.xml
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index-ep.xml
It’ll be interesting to see how this year shapes up after the fairly average 2006 and active 2005. NOAA are predicting 13 to 17 storms this year. They also predicted an active 2006 though. There is evidence that a late El Niño had an effect last year. This year they expect La Niña to come in to play. This should create tropical storm favourable conditions. In any event (accepting that I hope none of the storms make landfall and cause loss of life and property damage) it’ll be interesting to watch.
When there is a Tropical Storm in the Western Atlantic or Caribbean Sea you can use the BBC Weather site to view a barometric pressure chart, cloud cover or wind speed.
Click picture for larger view
Update: That was quick. Tropical storm Barry has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. Heading towards Florida. Sub-tropical storm Andrea is in the Atlantic off the East coast of Florida. I didn’t know they use a name for sub-tropical storms. Maybe it briefly went tropical then dipped in intensity?