Slow start to hurricane season is good news for Caribbean cruise fans

mercedes · August 6, 2009

There was good news Tuesday for cruisers planning a late summer or fall voyage in the Caribbean: The Atlantic hurricane season won't be as bad as initially thought.

As weather writer Doyle Rice reports this morning, the hurricane season has gotten off to such a slow start that the nation's premier hurricane forecasting team is revising its forecast downward.

The scientists, at Colorado State University, now expects 10 named tropical storms will form in the Atlantic this year with four becoming hurricanes. That's down from a forecast of 11 named storms and five hurricanes made just two months ago. In a typical season there are six hurricanes.

So far this year, not a single tropical storm or hurricane has developed in the Atlantic. The hurricane season "officially" kicked off on June 1.

Colorado State's Phil Klotzbach says the development of a strong El Niño weather pattern is behind the shifting forecast. El Niño is a warming of tropical Pacific Ocean water that can affect weather patterns around the globe and is associated with decreased levels of Atlantic hurricanes.