Study: New Orleans most likely to see hurricane

New Orleans, still down and out from last year’s assault by Hurricane Katrina, is the U.S. city most likely to be struck by hurricane force winds during the 2006 storm season, two researchers said in a report released Wednesday.

The forecast gives New Orleans a nearly 30 percent chance of being hit by a hurricane and a one in 10 chance the storm will be a Category 3 or stronger, meaning sustained winds of at least 111 miles per hour, said Chuck Watson of Kinetic Analysis Corp., a risk assessment firm in Savannah, Ga.

“Given the state of the infrastructure down there and the levees, gosh, that’s just not good news. But that’s what the climate signals look like,” Watson said.

Watson, who partnered with University of Central Florida statistics professor Mark Johnson, also predicted that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico will be disrupted for a minimum of a week at a cost of 7-8 million barrels of oil.

Up to 25 percent of U.S. oil production in the gulf was shut down last year and 20 percent is still out.

Watson gave a one in 10 chance that oil rigs will sustain enough damage to reduce production by 278 million barrels over the next four years, further escalating prices for gasoline.

Past paths, climate trends
The forecasters, who have worked with the oil and gas industry and with state insurance regulators, base their predictions in part on the paths of storms over the past 155 years and expected global climate conditions this year.

Watson and Johnson said a weak La Nina weather condition and warmer-than-normal Gulf of Mexico water temperatures were contributing factors. U.S. government weather experts say the La Nina phenomenon in place earlier this year has dissipated and should not be a factor during the hurricane season.

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the 2006 hurricane season was expected to produce 13 to 16 named storms, including four to six “major” hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher. No leading forecasters came close to predicting what happened in 2005, when 28 tropical storms spawned a record 15 hurricanes.

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Watson said the 2006 forecast for New Orleans was worse than his prediction for the city last year. But for now, he considers the 2005 season an aberration rather than a trend or a definitive sign of effects from global warming.

“If it happens again this year or next year, then we’re in a different climate world than we were in the last 100 years or so,” Watson said.

Mobile is second
Of 28 coastal cities evaluated under the forecast model, New Orleans ranked top with a 29.3 percent chance of experiencing hurricane-force winds in the storm season that begins officially on June 1.

Other top candidates include Mobile, Ala., with a 22 percent chance of being buffeted by hurricane-force winds, and the Florida cities of Key West and Pensacola, which both have a 20 percent chance.

West Palm Beach, Fla., which suffered severe damage during last year’s Hurricane Wilma, came in just after Key West and Pensacola with a 19 percent chance of being struck yet again by hurricane-force winds.

Watson and Johnson have published a number of research papers on storm and wind damage modeling.