Well when I learned, in the process of putting together a prediction for this thread, that their Dec numbers last year couldn't have been more wrong (11 / 6 / 3), after the year we just had, that eroded my confidence in their Dec predictions. I think I'll wait for their May update; at least that prediction was a little closer, even if they subsequently spent the entire season playing catch-up with the actual numbers.

How well has their Dec prediction done in prior years? Has it ever been close?

sometimes. they have past verification stats at the end of their forecast. -HF

I found it this morning in Jeff Masters blog:

"How good are these long-range hurricane forecasts issued in December? Last year, the December forecast called for an average 2005 hurricane season with 11 named storms, six of them becoming hurricanes. Obviously, the forecast was a bust--we had 26 named storms and 14 hurricanes. The updated forecast issued on May 31 of 2005 performed much better--15 named storms were forecast, with eight hurricanes. However, over the past five years (not including the forecast for the 2005 season), the skill of the December hurricane forecasts by the CSU team has been quite good--in four out of five years, the predicted number of named storms was within three of the actual number."

Also he had a really good summary. I'll post it below and if you don't want it in the forum feel free to delete it.