RUSH: They’ve revised downward the hurricane predictions. If you look, we’re in a flat line. We haven’t had one storm. My friend Roy Spencer has a website, it’s a little color bar graph that he tracks the worst hurricane seasons, 1931, I think it is, 2005 was Katrina. I think 2004. These are the three years. I don’t have it right in front of me. Then he’s got 2007 to track the hurricanes as they happen. So you can see by this time in the horrible seasons, there have already been a bunch of tropical storms, some have become hurricanes, we’re flat line, zilch, zero, nada. We got this one subropical thing, but it doesn’t count. Subtropical storms don’t count.
Subtropical ain’t tropical, it ain’t a depression, it’s not a tropical storm or any of that. So we’re flat line. So they reduce the forecast. They were talking 17 named storms. Three big mamas is what they’re forecasting now, down from — I have to get the story. They haven’t revised it downward much but the reason now — damn it — the sea level temperatures, the sea surface temperatures are cooler than everybody thought they were gonna be. They just — damn it — they just haven’t warmed up from the spring. Plus, moderate El Niño effect in there, the story says. I’m not sure about that, because I thought that had dissipated after being in effect last year. But of course if you listen to everybody after Hurricane Katrina, sea level temperatures were on the rise because of global warming. They’re cooler than normal this time of year in the formation areas this time of year for hurricanes. How can this be, ladies and gentlemen? It’s just a sad, sad day for the Drive-Bys and the panic industry when the forecast reduces the number of hurricanes. This happened last year, too. There must have been four forecast revisions downward, as hurricanes didn’t happen. ‘Well, we’re revising our forecast here, 17, we’re now going to predict ten.’ Then a couple of days later, ‘Well, we’re going to revise this forecast from ten to eight.’ We had three if I recall last year, I don’t recall how many of them became hurricanes.
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RUSH: Yeah, here are the details last year. And, you know, hurricane season ends on November 30th. This story is from last November, in ’06. There were nine named storms last year. The lowest number since 1997. This is the year after Katrina. Five of those storms developed into hurricanes, two of which were considered major, but none of them made landfall in the US in 2006, zilch, zero, nada. Here’s the story. It’s from Reuters. ‘The 2007 hurricane season may be less severe than forecast due to cooler-than-expected…’ Experts once again stunned and shocked, surprised, perhaps disappointed, ‘… water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, private forecaster WSI Corp said on Tuesday.’ The season now will bring 14 named storms, of which six will become hurricanes, three will become major. They had previously expected 15 storms of which eight would become hurricanes and four would become major. I understand they got their models and I understand they got there statistical histories and so forth. But this is nothing more than a wild guess. ‘We feel the general threat to the western Gulf is slightly reduced now with our new forecast with a corresponding increase in the threat to the eastern Gulf and Florida.’ That’s a wild guess.
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RUSH: Well, just when we were all feeling better with the revised hurricane forecast — fewer storms, fewer hurricanes, and fewer major storms — here comes this from Reuters: ‘Worst of Atlantic Hurricane Season Still to Come.’ I knew it was too good to be true! We’re all feeling good out there, and then they run this. ‘Nearly eight weeks have passed since the last tropical storm in the Atlantic-Caribbean region faded away, but banish any notion the 2007 hurricane season has been unusually slow and beware the coming months,’ comma, ‘experts say. The peak of the six-month season is just around the corner and forecasters are still predicting a busy one. ‘There’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary,’ Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said of the Atlantic season’s first two months. ‘It’s not slow. It’s not fast.” They may be right. You know, the worst hurricane — second worst hurricane, whatever it was — in US history, Hurricane Andrew, was the first hurricane of the season, in late August. That hit Homestead down south of Miami. Everybody that lives down here in south Florida knows the peak of the hurricane season is September 10th. There’s a peak period in there that goes from late August like to the middle of October, and September 16th or 20th is the peak based on the statistics of when these things strike. I only bring all this up because everybody’s saying, ‘Where are the hurricanes? Where are the hurricanes?’
‘Why do you think there are any hurricanes? Should be any hurricanes?’
‘Well, because the media is out there saying it’s the worst hurricane season ever, da-da-da.’
It is a little early. However, even in the worst hurricane seasons, there have been few more storms by now. They may not have hit land, but they’ve been out there, than we’ve had so far.