NU Online News Service, Jan.20, 10:26 a.m. EST

Florida has less chance of being hit by a hurricane this year, while the coastal segment including North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia will see heightened storm activity, a new study forecasted.

Making that prediction is Guy Carpenter in collaboration with WSI Corporation. The firms' GC ForeCat update also predicted a decline in hurricane activity for the stretch of Gulf Coast running from Texas to the Alabama-Florida border.

The forecasters said in the Southeast, the region they see as most vulnerable to hurricanes coming ashore this year, the landfall rate is 0.70.

They explained that the 0.70 figure representing the mean number of landfalling tropical cyclones in that region is well above the 1951-2007 average landfall rate of 0.41.

For the Northeast region, meanwhile, a forecast of 0.29 mean rate of landfall has been calculated for 2010, which is no change from the long-term average.

The Florida coastline region average landfall rate will drop to 0.46 from 0.49 and the Gulf section will lessen to 0.59 from 0.66.

The GC ForeCat was first developed for the 2008 hurricane season. The companies said it uses hurricane landfall data from 1951-2007 with corresponding climate and ocean data, representative of North Atlantic oscillation, tropical Atlantic water temperatures, and the El Ni?o and La Ni?a currents.

"The skill of this forecast has been established using historical storm seasons and 'hold-one-out' analyses," the prediction statement said.