THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE INIKI : Experts See No Proof That Storms Will Multiply : Weather: There is no evidence to link recent hurricanes in Florida, Guam and Hawaii, forecasters say.

Although powerful hurricanes have struck Florida, Guam and now Hawaii in less than three weeks, experts insist that there is little evidence to suggest the end of a 25-year lull during which the United States has been relatively free of major tropical storms.

“There is no evidence yet of a new cycle of storm activity,” Max Mayfield, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center, said Saturday. “Whether these storms are just freaks or not, we don’t know. As yet, there is no clear trend.”

In fact, there is no known correlation among the frequency or intensity of tropical storms in the Atlantic, the eastern Pacific and the northwestern Pacific, considered three separate weather basins. Typhoon Omar hit Guam on Aug. 28, four days after Hurricane Andrew blasted southern Florida.

But the statistical anomaly of three powerful hurricanes affecting the United States and its territories in 19 days has given rise to speculation about what, if anything, may be taking place in Northern Hemisphere weather patterns. Earlier this week, National Hurricane Center Director Bob Sheets said the United States could be entering a new era of more powerful Atlantic and Caribbean storms, but that his speculation is based on history and not a quantifiable trend.

William M. Gray, a meteorologist at Colorado State University, agrees. “These are just statistical happenings,” he said. “But there sure are going to be a lot of people saying: ‘Gee, three major storms must mean global warming, and man is degrading the environment.’ No. It’s a statistical freak--probability.”

Equally freakish, experts point out, is the link between Andrew and Hurricane Iniki, two Category 4 storms--with sustained winds of more than 131 m.p.h.--that turned into killers and caused widespread destruction in states more than 5,000 nautical miles apart. Both storms trace their origins to tropical waves, areas of cloudiness and low pressure in the trade winds that roll off Africa’s west coast each summer.

Andrew and Iniki had their beginnings in successive African waves, just four days apart. Mayfield said the wave that grew into Andrew came off the northwest coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands on Aug. 14. The system became a tropical storm on Aug. 17, a hurricane on Aug. 22, and blew into Florida south of downtown Miami less than two days later.

The next wave, which moved off the African coast on Aug. 18, did not take on enough organization even to be called a tropical depression as it moved westward across the Atlantic, into the Caribbean, and, on Aug. 28, across Panama into the eastern Pacific. But there, drifting northwest over the warm waters off the coast of Guatemala and Mexico, it began to grow.

Iniki earned its name as a tropical storm only last Tuesday.

Although no scientific theory links the frequency or intensity of storms that develop in various oceans, Gray has earned widespread respect for his predictions of each six-month Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through November. Using a formula based on rainfall in the western Sahel region of Africa, Gray predicted that the number of storms this year would be significantly fewer than the average of 10. Thus far, Andrew has been the only Atlantic tropical storm of 1992.

“I also predicted one intense storm for this year,” he said. “I hope that’s Andrew.”

Regions at Risk

Hawaii is at the western edge of one of the world’s most active hurricane regions. Storms seldom reach California because cooler water robs them of their energy.

A New Era of Hurricanes? National Hurricane Center Director Bob Sheets said the United States could be entering a new era of more powerful Atlantic and Caribbean storms. But he bases his speculation on history, and not a quantifiable trend.

Source: World Book