The 2017 Hurricane Season Outlook was unveiled this morning at the 2017 National Tropical Weather Conference in South Padre Island, Texas. Dr. Philip Klotzbach, a Research Scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), shared his analysis and forecast before a crowd of enthusiastic meteorologists.
His 2017 forecast calls for a less active Atlantic Hurricane Season, with 11 storms expected; the seasonal norm is 12. The forecast calls for 4 hurricanes over 16 hurricane days; typically, there’s 6.5 hurricanes over 21.3 days.
Klotzbach received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from CSU . He’s been employed in the Department of Atmospheric Science for the past 14 years where he has been co-author on the Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts with legendary hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray. Gray passed away last April.
Klotzbach became first author on the seasonal hurricane forecasts in 2006; he developed the 2-week forecasts currently being issued during the peak months of the hurricane season between August and October.
Klotzbach graduated from Bridgewater State College with a B.S. degree in Geography in 1999. Afterwards, he attended CSU where he received his Masters degree in Atmospheric Science in 2002.
“Hurricane Gloria was what triggered my passion in understanding hurricanes,” Klotzbach told us. The 1985 hurricane blew through his New England hometown. “I remember printing out hurricane tracks and maps with my father,” Klotzbach described his earliest moments in the field of meteorology.
