"This year’s Atlantic hurricane season should be “near normal,” government forecasters announced on Thursday, with the likelihood of nine to 15 named storms, and two to four major Category 3 hurricanes with winds of 111 miles per hour or greater.
Hurricane season officially begins on June 1 and runs through Nov. 30, with the peak coming in August, September and October. This week, a subtropical storm, Andrea, weak and short-lived, slipped in — the fifth year in a row that a storm gained enough strength to warrant a name before the season’s start. (Storms generally get named when they reach wind speeds of 39 miles per hour.)
Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University, said that “this is the first time on record that the Atlantic has had five consecutive years with named storms” before the official start of the season; the previous record of four years in a row occurred from 1951 through 1954, he said. But he added, “I don’t think that there is too much that we can make of this at this point.”"
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