First hurricane season forecast released

Lazaro Aleman editor@riverbendnews.org With the Atlantic hurricane season set to begin on June 1, meteorologists have begun making their seasonal predictions, with AccuWeather releasing the very first forecast. In its outlook, which the private weather company released on March 25, AccuWeather is forecasting a hurricane season that will be near or below the historical average, attributed in large part to the emerging development of El Niño. The AccuWeather outlook specifically calls for 11 to 16 named storms, with four to seven of them becoming hurricanes, two to four becoming major hurricanes of a category 3 or higher, and three to five having the potential for direct impact