Guessing games

From AP-

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that La Nina - a cooling of Pacific Ocean waters that generally brings a more active Atlantic hurricane season - will be absent for the next two months.

But don't get rid of those disaster kits just yet.

The absence of La Nina doesn't necessarily herald a tame summer for tropical storms and hurricanes, said Dennis Feltgen, meteorologist and spokesman for NOAA in Miami.

"There are so many other ingredients that contribute to the development of tropical cyclones, it's not just the fact that we don't have a La Nina that comes into play here," Feltgen said.

Hurricane season 2005 was a textbook example of this. La Nina wasn't around, but the season managed to break records, with 28 named storms, including 15 hurricanes, seven of which were major.

La Nina is the counterpart to the better known El Nino, a warming of Pacific waters near the equator that creates a less conducive environment for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic. Both ocean conditions are hard to predict long-term and don't follow regular patterns.

Feltgen and other forecasters like him are really a joke. First we have La Nina and that means an active hurricane season, now they say we won't have La Nina but the season will still be active. Does La Nina cause more hurricanes or not?

Bottom line- Long-term hurricane or weather forecasting is about as reliable as preseason football picks.

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