[StBernard] New Orleans seen top US target for '06 hurricanes

[Westley Annis]

New Orleans seen top US target for '06 hurricanes 
By Barbara Liston
2 hours, 42 minutes ago
 


New Orleans, still down and out from last year's assault by Hurricane
Katrina, is the U.S. city most likely to be struck by hurricane force winds
during the 2006 storm season, a researcher said on Wednesday.

The forecast gives New Orleans a nearly 30 percent chance of being hit by a
hurricane and a one in 10 chance the storm will be a Category 3 or stronger,
meaning sustained winds of at least 111 miles per hour (178 km per hour),
said Chuck Watson of Kinetic Analysis Corp., Savannah, Georgia a risk
assessment firm.

"Given the state of the infrastructure down there and the levees, gosh,
that's just not good news. But that's what the climate signals look like,"
Watson said.

Watson, who has partnered with University of Central Florida statistics
professor Mark Johnson, also predicted that oil production in the Gulf of
Mexico will be disrupted for a minimum of a week at a cost of 7-8 million
barrels of oil.

Up to 25 percent of U.S. oil production in the Gulf was shut down last year
and 20 percent is still out.

Watson gave a one in 10 chance that oil rigs will sustain enough damage to
reduce production by 278 million barrels this year, further escalating
prices for gasoline.

The forecasters, who have worked with the oil and gas industry and with
state insurance regulators, base their forecast in part on the paths of
storms over the past 155 years and expected global climate conditions this
year.

Watson and Johnson said a weak La Nina weather condition and
warmer-than-normal Gulf of Mexico water temperatures were contributing
factors. U.S. government weather experts say the La Nina phenomenon in place
earlier this year has dissipated and should not be a factor during the
hurricane season.

On Tuesday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said
the 2006 hurricane season was expected to produce 13 to 16 named storms,
including four to six "major" hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher.
No leading forecasters came close to predicting what happened in 2005, when
28 tropical storms spawned a record 15 hurricanes.

The 2006 forecast for News Orleans was worse than Watson's prediction for
the city last year, he said. But for now, he considers the 2005 season an
aberration rather than a trend or a definitive sign of effects from global
warming.

"If it happens again this year or next year, then we're in a different
climate world than we were in the last 100 years or so," Watson said.

Of 28 coastal cities evaluated under the forecast model, New Orleans ranked
top with a 29.3 percent chance of experiencing hurricane-force winds in the
storm season that begins officially on June 1.

Other top candidates include Mobile, Alabama, with a 22 percent chance of
being buffeted by hurricane-force winds, and the Florida cities of Key West
and Pensacola, which both have a 20 percent chance.

West Palm Beach, Florida, which suffered severe damage during last year's
Hurricane Wilma, came in just after Key West and Pensacola with a 19 percent
chance of being struck yet again by hurricane-force winds.

Watson and Johnson have published a number of research papers on storm and
wind damage modeling.