Forecasters expect active storm season

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.

After the battering by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, there were widespread fears last summer of another powerful storm striking, but an unexpected El Nino weather pattern helped soothe conditions.

El Nino is a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that occurs every few years. The warm water affects wind patterns that guide weather movement, and its effects can be seen worldwide. In El Nino years, there tend to be fewer summer hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.

But El Nino is over, and conditions could develop that might even encourage more storms, said Bill Proenza, head of the National Hurricane Center.

Earlier this month Philip Klotzbach, a research associate at Colorado State University, and Joe Bastardi, the chief hurricane forecaster for AccuWeather Inc., also said they anticipated a more active storm cycle this year.

Subtropical Storm Andrea, the first named storm of the year, formed off the Southeast coast two weeks ago, well before the June 1 official beginning of hurricane season.

Last year, there were 10 tropical storms in the Atlantic; two of them made landfall in the U.S.