The news editor was old-school, skeptical of almost everything, so I was surprised when she dropped an envelope on my desk postmarked Fort Collins, Colo. Hurricane season forecast, she said. Make some sense out of it. Hes either lucky as hell, or knows something that the rest of us don’t.
The year was 1987. I was a news reporter for the local paper on Key Biscayne, Fla., an island that-so the story goes-a schooner that drew a full fathom had sailed right over during the hurricane of 1926. Tropical storms targeted the island with a precision that implied intent, so any huckster who claimed to have a crystal ball for storm season could easily find an audience. A real meteorologist who asserted he had such a glimpse of the days from June 1 to November 15 would surely make headlines. And Dr. William Gray-who died in April 2016 at the age of 86-did just that, again and again.
Mostly, Gray, a Colorado State University scientist, made the headlines for getting it right. He wasnt perfect (1997 was a notoriously bad year), but most years, his predictions were uncanny. Initially released each June, with more frequent reports in later years, Grays Atlantic hurricane season predictions forecast the number of named storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes, and the number of days that at least one named storm would be roaming the region.
That first report I read was in courier font, all 18 pages typed, I imagine, on an old Smith-Corona. Gray and his team of mostly graduate students did pretty well that year. They forecast that eight storms would form, and seven did. Three became hurricanes, when Gray had predicted five.
In the years that followed, Grays hurricane season forecasts would become to South Florida what Punxsutawney Phil is for our northern neighbors-a bell-weather for how bad weather will be. It was a business that Gray took quite seriously for the rest of his life. In fact, in the years leading up to his death, hed come to starting each presentation with a paean to doomsaying: Societys progress can continue only as long as its old men persist in decrying that everything is going to hell.
In the last decade, Ive identified with Gray more and more. My job here at Practical Sailor, though implicitly to enable the fulfillment of a longheld dream, involves no small amount of doom-saying. We routinely lament the state of marine equipment manufacturing. And though manufacturers often criticize what might be perceived as a negative bias, I have a notion that our readers get nearly as much satisfaction being informed that Product X is a piece of junk, as they do learning that Product Y is a PS Best Choice.
I was sad to hear that Gray passed away in the spring. One always hates to see a fellow curmudgeon go. But the timing made me smile; it seemed almost as uncanny as his insight into storm season. Just two days prior to his death, the April prediction for 2016 was hot off the press-as if he hated to leave any work unfinished.
And so I will close with the final forecast of Dr. William Gray-who has done as much to raise public awareness of these deadly storms as he did to elevate the art of forecasting. According to Gray and his long-time apprentice, Dr. Phil Klotsback, who has been the lead author of the report since 2006, this is what the 2016 storm season bodes: 12 named storms, five hurricanes, and two major hurricanes.
An average storm season ahead, so says an above-average man.
