MIAMI - La Nina conditions are developing in the Pacific Ocean, and that cooling of waters generally brings a more active Atlantic hurricane season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.
'While we can't officially call it a La Nina yet, we expect that this pattern will continue to develop during the next three months, meeting the NOAA definition for a La Nina event later this year,' said Mike Halpert, acting deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md.
La Nina likely would extend the drought in the Southwest this fall and create wetter-than-normal weather in the Pacific Northwest, experts said.
The conditions also reinforce government and university researchers' forecasts for an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season. So far, there have been five named Atlantic storms this season and two hurricanes.
Hurricane forecaster William Gray, at Colorado State University, downgraded his forecast for the 2007 season slightly this week, but he still predicted above-average activity for the rest of the season, through the end of November, with five more hurricanes, two of them major.
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