Although the Season still has about six weeks remaining, the trends in the basin hint that the season is rapidly coming to a close.
2012 was yet another highly active season with a total (so far) of 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes and 1 major hurricane. If the end of the season does not produce anymore activity, 2012 would become the first season to record 17 named storms. The pre-season expectation by many (myself included) was that a weak El Nino was going to occur and that the seasonal tropical activity would be low, but Sea Surface Temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific stayed neutral - and busy seasons often occur during ENSO neutral conditions. As a group, CFHC didn't do so good this year with an average total forecast error of 7. The CSU forecast in April was 10/4/2 - for a total error of 13 - and every CFHC forecast did better than that! The season started with 4 named storms before July 1st - which is a record - and quickly put a dent in many of the early season predictions. A total of 24 forecasts were submitted and the average forecast was 14/7/3. The forecasts were graded for total deviation (plus or minus) from the actual number in each of the three categories and then totaled to get a final score for each forecast. The levels of skill and the number of forecasts in each grouping were as follows:

SCORE
0-2 Outstanding (none)
3-4 Excellent - 3 forecasts
5-6 Good - 8 forecasts
7-8 Fair - 8 forecasts
9-12 Hmm - 5 forecasts

The best score this season was 4 by stormtiger, Lamar-Plant City, and srquirrely (thats two years in a row with good scores for Lamar-Plant City and srquirrely). If another named storm should occur before the end of the season, srquirrely would become the outright winner with a score of 3. Good forecast scores of 5 or 6 were recorded by B.C. Francis, weathernet, Hurricane Frederick 1979, M.A., riche, gsand, danielw and IMTechspec.

I'll start a new thread in January with a first outlook for the 2013 season. 2007 might be an analog year for 2013 but thats still uncertain at this early date.
ED