Hurricane forecasters square off.

Byline: LYNNE LANGLEY

During hurricane season, which begins today, Lowcountry residents keep one eye on the weather forecast. The path of a storm can mean the difference between taking an umbrella to work and fleeing the area, so people want accurate predictions.

While seasonal forecasts can't pinpoint where storms might land, they provide an idea of how fierce the season may be.

These predictions have become an area of fierce competition. One company even uses a scorecard to show whether it or the granddaddy of forecasters does a better job.

In the past 18 years, says the Weather Research Center in Houston, it has beat Bill Gray seven years. He bested them three, and they tied three. The other five years, both teams erred by more than two storms.

Gray started it all 20 years ago, tucked safely away from hurricanes at Colorado State University. The federal government jumped in halfway through the 1998 hurricane season.

No two forecasters look at quite the same list of factors, and most add prognostications that others don't offer.

Hot water in the Pacific, rainfall in Africa, upper air currents and even sunspots may determine how many hurricanes threaten South Carolina in a given year.

Every year, the number of season-long predictions seems to grow, and more companies, if not meteorologists, enter the hurricane forecasting business.

The research center concentrates on which section of the coast hurricanes are most likely to make landfall. That's what their clients want to know, especially if they own coastal oil rigs.

The federal government gives a range of numbers, based on whether it seems it will be a busier or quieter season than the long-term average. It doesn't even hint where storms might strike.

Gray keeps revising his forecasts as climactic factors change but comes up with an exact number of days that he predicts tropical storms, hurricanes and intense hurricanes will swirl in the Atlantic and Gulf of…