The Gulf Coast, particularly Louisiana and Mississippi, are breathing a sigh of relief as Tropical Depression 5 has dissipated, but there is still a long season ahead and there is a large chance that this hurricane season will be a strong one, as predicted by the National Weather Service.

Lead seasonal hurricane forecaster, Gary Bell, said that all the necessary factors for a stormy season are coming together, even though the number of predicted storms has been reduced from 23 to 20.  Up to 12 of those storms could become hurricanes.

The Atlantic Ocean has temperatures that are consistently higher than normal, and this helps produce hurricanes. Also, the La Niña phenomenon is building rapidly. This is when the cooling of the Pacific Ocean assists the formation of Atlantic hurricanes.

So far there has only been one Atlantic hurricane this year, which struck Eastern Mexico in late June. However, hurricane season is usually not very active until mid-August, and Bell reiterated that this could be a very active year. “The key message is that significant activity is still predicted,” he said.

NASA has recently announced that they will be making new efforts to research hurricanes, and will send a high-tech aircraft to examine how hurricanes are formed. The airplane will be able to linger over a storm for about 12 hours and will contain cameras, special radar and other tools that will be used to study storms.