Forecasters have revised their projections but still expect this hurricane season to be the strongest one since 2012.
It's been a quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean so far this summer, but forecasters from the U.S. Climate Prediction Center are expecting storm activity to pick up as we get closer to late August and September. And they have slightly boosted their projection of how many named storms will develop and pose a potential threat to the Eastern seaboard.
On Thursday, the prediction center tweaked its original forecast from late May and said there's now an 85 percent chance, instead of a 75 percent chance, that the 2016 hurricane season will be either near-normal or above normal.
In terms of storm numbers, the new projection calls for 12 to 17 tropical storms likely to form this year, with five to eight of those intensifying into hurricanes. In May, the agency was calling for 10 to 16 tropical storms, with four to eight becoming hurricanes.
Worst storms in New Jersey history
In either case, the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season is still expected to be the strongest one since 2012, the year that New Jersey was pummeled by Superstorm Sandy. New Jersey was also hit hard by Tropical Storm Irene the previous year, in August 2011, but has had three straight years of quiet hurricane seasons, from 2013 to 2015.
The Climate Prediction Center said it based its revised 2016 forecast on changing conditions in the Caribbean Sea and the tropical Atlantic Ocean, an area it refers to as the "main development region," or MDR, for tropical systems.
"Overall conditions within the MDR are now expected to favor a more active season than was predicted in May," the prediction center announced on Thursday. "The main factors that are conducive to a more active season now compared to the May outlook include 1) the disappearance of El Nino's suppressing influence on Atlantic hurricanes, 2) weaker vertical wind shear across the central MDR, 3) somewhat weaker trade winds across portions of the southern MDR, and 4) a stronger west African monsoon."
El Nino, a long period of substantial warming of surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is known to wreak havoc on weather systems around the world by adding moisture to the atmosphere and shifting the flow of the jet stream. La Nina -- expected to occur later this summer or early fall -- is when the Pacific waters get cooler than normal, often leading to more tropical storms in the Atlantic because it tends to reduce the wind shear that affects the development of organized storm systems.
So far this year, five named storms -- Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle and Earl -- have formed in the Atlantic basin, but most turned out to be weak tropical storms. Two turned into hurricanes: Alex, a rare January hurricane that made landfall as a tropical storm on the Azores islands near Portugal, and Earl, which caused heavy rain and flooding in Belize and Mexico in early August.
Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LensReality or like him on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.