What kind of Hurricane Season is expected for 2012?

Dennis Gonguez

The 2012 hurricane season officially starts on June first, but there have already been two named storms. Tropical Storms Alberto formed more than a week early near South Carolina while Hurricane Bud recently weakened to a tropical storm as it headed to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. While that put a lot of people on edge, the early start does not mean that it will be an active season. In fact, predictions are that it’s going to be a relatively average hurricane season. Chief Met Officer, Dennis Gonguez, spoke to News Five about the predictions and stresses the importance of being prepared, no matter how many storms are expected. 

Dennis Gonguez, Chief Met Officer

“The predictions for the 2012 hurricane season are for an average to a little bit above average season. The average number of named systems would be around nine and of those, six will become hurricanes and of those six, two will become intense hurricanes. The predictions are around ten named systems, about seven of those to become hurricanes and then about two to three major hurricanes. So it’s just above average.  To some extent we can forecast the number of systems that would develop, but where they make landfall is a completely different issue. So that’s why at the Met Service we try to talk about being more prepared rather than focusing on the number of systems that would form because it could be two systems form for the year and one of them hits us. It could be a very inactive year, but we could be the bad lucked ones to get one of those systems. So we try to focus more on the preparedness issue; be ready for the hurricane season, have your plans in place, be ready just in the event that we be the bad lucked ones to one of those systems.  The hurricane season starts in about a week’s time, we should have already thought of our family emergency plan, our business emergency plan, have those together, probably rehearse those and all that because we can’t tell what will happen this year.”