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CSU Forecast: 72-Percent Chance of Major Hurricane Landfall in 2013

If the CSU meteorological team is right, insurers should expect another busy hurricane season, with at least one major landfalling storm.

By Chad Hemenway | Updated on May 01, 2013

If the Colorado State University (CSU) meteorological team is right, insurers should expect another busy hurricane season. Now in its 30th year of issuing seasonal forecasts for the Atlantic basin, the well-respected CSU has predicted that at least one named storm will be spinning in the Atlantic Ocean for an equivalent of three months during the upcoming hurricane season, which runs from June 1 until November 30, 2013.

Perhaps of greatest consequence is the likelihood of a major land-falling U.S. hurricane, according to Philip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray, the atmospheric scientists responsible for CSU’s forecasting. Taking current evidence of oceanic temperatures and other factors into account, Klotzbach and Gray estimate a 72-percent chance at least one of these storms will strengthen to a major hurricane and make landfall somewhere on the U.S. coast from Texas to Maine. That’s just the beginning, as the pair predicts a total of 18 named storms, nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes of Category 3—sustained winds of at least 111 to 129 miles per hour—for the 2013 season.

Of the 95 named-storm days expected, 40 of them will be occupied by a hurricane. Additionally, there is a 47-percent chance that a major hurricane slips under the Florida Peninsula to strike one of the Gulf States, which includes the west coast of Florida.

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