"not after we bought super-duper doppler radars!!!!!"

I find it interesting that no local tv station mentioned this on their weather reports.
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MIAMI (Reuters) - The number of hurricanes churning through the Caribbean toward the United States this year is likely to be less than once feared and may even be less than normal, a noted U.S. hurricane research team said on Friday.

The Colorado State University team formed by pioneer forecaster William Gray cut its forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season for a second time and predicted there would be 13 tropical storms with five of them becoming hurricanes.

The new reduction reflected a widespread trend among experts to cut their expectations for 2006 to well below the record number of storms last year -- bringing some relief to millions of American coastal dwellers.

One factor leading to the revisions are indications the El Nino weather phenomenon may take shape in the Pacific in the autumn. El Nino conditions, an unusual warming of Pacific waters, suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

Another factor was a high level of West African dust over the Atlantic, Colorado State University researcher Philip Klotzbach and Gray said in a statement.

"Current conditions in the Atlantic indicate that we will now see a slightly below-average hurricane season with far less activity than was experienced in each of the last two years," Klotzbach said.