HERE’S TO BELOW AVERAGE

You don’t generally want to hear “below average.” But in the case of Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project’s prediction for the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, there have been no sweeter words uttered.

This, of course, doesn’t mean we’re safe. The CSU TMP team, which has been considered the gold standard hurricane forecaster (yes, weird for a university in the Rocky Mountains), predicts we’ll see 13 named storms during the Atlantic hurricane season, which begins in just a few days — June 1. But, of those 13, five are expected to become hurricanes, two of them major. As we all know here in the Northeast, one major storm (Sandy) is all it takes to change our lives forever.

Closer to the Atlantic, Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, which is headed up by the father of “the most controversial chart in science,” Michael Mann, is predicting 7-13 storms, ten of those named. Let’s hope the CSU team is more accurate.

You know who’s disappointed by “below average”? The Weather Channel and all the other cable news networks that feed like hyenas on major hurricanes. I promise to write another, more in-depth on television news coverage of hurricanes, which drives me madder than the rest of their sensationalism. Luckily, I found some space in my book to write about it, which was deeply satisfying.