Atlantic may spawn as many as 8 hurricanes by season’s end

The season is not expected to move to the “extremely active” level, he said, thanks to “competing conditions” that include “less conducive ocean temperature patterns in both the Atlantic and eastern subtropical North Pacific, combined with stronger wind shear and sinking motion in the atmosphere over the Caribbean Sea”.

NOAA increased its outlook to 12 to 17 named storms with winds of at least 39 miles (63 kilometers) per hour in the tropical Atlantic after the end of El Nino, which can produce winds that damage systems, according to an updated forecast released Thursday.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also said it expects more storms forming in the Atlantic than in recent years due to weaker vertical wind shear, less powerful trade winds over the central tropical Atlantic and a stronger West African monsoon.

So far there has been 5 named storms in the Atlantic. Of those, five to eight are expected to become hurricanes, including two to four major hurricanes, the agency said in a report.

The seasonal average is for 12 named storms, six of them hurricanes, with three of them major.

Another two grew to hurricane status.

Forecasters dropped the chances of a below-average season to only 15 percent. Two to four could intensify to major storms, forecasters said.

Hurricane Earl one day before making landfall in Belize taken from NOAA’s GOES-East satellite on August 3, 2016. Only one, Alex, was became a hurricane. The last hurricane to form in January was Hurricane Alice in 1955.

Hurricane Sandy swept through the western Atlantic killing at least 145 people, and causing as much as $50 billion in property damage in the US, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

A combination of fewer tropical storms and a lessening reliance on Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas production (thanks to the growth in production out of inland shale plays) has kept hurricane-related damage to the nation’s energy infrastructure and markets to a minimum in recent years.