People in the southeastern United States and the Caribbean are preparing for the arrival some time this summer of Alberto, Beryl, Chris and Debby, but the foursome aren't likely to be welcome guests.
Those are the names designated for the first four Atlantic tropical storms of the hurricane season, which officially gets underway on Thursday. The season runs from June to November.
The coming season is likely to be active, with 17 named storms, but not as destructive as 2005, when a record 28 named storms raged across the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, said William Gray, a hurricane forecaster at Colorado State University.
Nine of the storms are expected to reach hurricane status, five of those generating winds of at least 175 kilometres an hour.
During the 2005 season, considered the most destructive on record, 15 hurricanes churned up the ocean, seven of them reaching major proportions, among them the devastating Katrina, which is blamed for 1,300 deaths in Louisiana and Mississippi.
"If the atmosphere and the ocean behave as they have in the past, we should have a very active season, but that doesn't necessarily translate into storms that produce as much destruction as last year," Gray said in an Associated Press report.
His team said there is an 82-per-cent chance that at least one major hurricane will hit land this year.
Last month, forecasters with the National Hurricane Centre and two other National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agencies predicted 16 named storms this year, six of them major hurricanes.
Gray said hurricane seasons are likely to be active for another 15 or 20 years. The season from 1971 to 1994 averaged 8.5 named storms, five hurricanes and just over one major hurricane, according to U.S. government statistics.
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