Emergency managers and others will hear a preliminary forecast for this year’s hurricane season this week at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans. 

The forecast will come from Bill Gray, professor emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. Charlotte County Emergency Manager Wayne Sallade is also at the Conference.  He said  Gray’s preliminary outlook will probably point toward another active season.

“We’re still in that period that started in 1994 and we’ve got a ways to go in this particular cycle of hurricane activity. They last anywhere from 25 to 30 years,” he said.  “If you look back into the 1870’s you can clearly see the fact that we have these periods of tremendous activity and then we have these lull periods where there’s just not that much.”

Last year’s season culminated with Hurricane Sandy which hit the east coast of the U.S. in the last week of October and was the second costliest in U.S. history.  Hurricane season begins June 1.