As a current south Floridian (and consumer of Gulf petroleum), I hope they're wrong about this:

Bastardi, who in March of last year correctly forecasted that the region would get “minimal” attention by that season’s hurricanes, said that this year, “the Gulf and Florida face a renewed threat, and we will see more powerful storms across the board. We will not get anywhere near the amount of storms that we did in 2005, but it is the intensity of the storms we do get that will be of major concern.”

Well, he correctly predicted that 2006 wasn't going to be as bad as 2005. What's his record before that? I would think that the only reason Bastardi (poor guy) is getting attention now is because he bet on the other side of the odds when everyone else was predicting a season of 18 Katrinas for 2006. What do all of the other alleged forecasters predict for this year (the ones who aren't fear-mongers, of course)?

He might be on to something. I don't know about the rest of the country, but the winter of 05-06 here in South Texas didn't exist. We normally drop below freezing four times normally. The 04-05 winter was much colder. This winter we had a once in a fifteen year ice storm that left up to a half inch of ice on everything and it stayed below freezing for the next two days.

Spring of '06 was dry and warm. This Spring is more normal, with loads of powerful rainstorms and overcast skies often. Granted, this is one focused area, but it coincides with the hurricane strengths we saw in 05 and then last year.

FWIW, Bastardi had it right early this just past winter when he compared it to the winter of '65-'66. Warm into January but followed by quite cold weather in the northeast. But weather forecasting remains a mystical art so it's any way the wind blows.