US weather specialists are forecasting a very active hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean this year.
Philip Klotzbach and William Gray of the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University said they expected neutral or weak-to-moderate La Nina conditions during the upcoming hurricane season.
Their annual forecast for 2007 predicts 17 named storms could form, of which nine could become hurricanes, highly likely to strike Caribbean and US coasts.
The likelihood of a hurricane hitting the US eastern coast is 74%, they said, while in the Caribbean the likelihood was greater than average.
The hurricane season stretches from 1 June to 30 November.
Last year saw nine storms form, five of them hurricanes, which did relatively little damage after a disastrous 2005 season.
