Today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA as most of us know the organization as, has upped the number of storms in its hurricane forecast for the remainder of the 2005 hurricane season.
So far we have seen 7 named storms with 2 of them becoming hurricanes, major hurricanes. NOAA forecasters say there are several reasons why they are upping the forecast. Click on the following link for the complete story.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2484.htm
As the NOAA forecasters talk about a busier season, today we are now looking at tropical depression #8. It formed from a tropical wave in the Atlantic that we have been watching for the past several days. Last week it was well east of the Virgin Islands. As we speak it is about 335 miles southwest of Bermuda. The upper level winds will likely carry it away from North Carolina and the east coast in general. There is the possibility that this will become Harvey making it the 8th named storm of the season. If this happens, we will set a new record for the earliest development of the 8th named storm. The previous record is August 15th.
The new forecast from NOAA predicts the potential of seeing 21 named storms. The current hurricane alphabet has only 21 names ending with Wilma. If we surpass the 21 names we will start over with the Greek alphabet....Hurricane Alpha, hurricane Beta, hurricane Gamma, hurricane Delta....Etc.
This should be a very interesting season to say the least!
