The flooding in the Midwest has brought freight traffic on the upper Mississippi to a standstill, stranding more than 100 barges loaded with grain, cement, scrap metal, fertilizer and other products while shippers wait for the water to drop. ...more

June 21, 2008

TAMPA (AP) — The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season should be about as bad as normal or slightly busier, with a good chance of six to nine hurricanes forming, federal forecasters said Thursday in a new way of predicting how active the season could be. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials also said 12 to 16 named storms and two to five major hurricanes could form in the season that starts June 1 and ends Nov. 30. They said there is only a 60 to 70 percent chance for their predictions to come true, the first time officials gave a probability. They want people to realize the forecasts are uncertain, to avoid complacency that can occur when previous forecasts were wrong. ...more

May 22, 2008

Using a simplified forecasting technique, researcher William Gray is predicting an above-average hurricane season in the Atlantic next year, with seven hurricanes, three of them major. ...more

December 8, 2007