Mean season: last year's wild Atlantic storm season may have been a preview of things to come.

The atmosphere was in a very bad mood last year over the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Like some great hurricane factory, nature pumped out one storm after another. By the end of the hurricane season, 11 hurricanes had spun up in the tropics. Five of those storms were "major" hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph or more. It was one of the most active hurricane seasons on record. Perhaps most amazing of all, William Gray saw it coming.

Gray, a meteorologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, has issued forecasts of hurricane activity since 1984. Other hurricane researchers praise him for his uncanny ability to recognize patterns in the tangle of meteorological data he uses to make his forecasts. But even Gray cannot foresee what people in hurricaneprone regions most want to know: when and where the next season's hurricanes will make landfall and just how powerful the storms will be when they do. For this, people in the Caribbean and on the U.S. Gulf and East coasts rely on the meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

Federal hurricane forecasters have made some notably excellent forecasts in recent years. In 1993, a powerful new computer model helped them predict that Hurricane Emily would veer out to sea after striking a glancing blow on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And they were right. As a result, extensive -- and expensive -- storm preparations were avoided.

But what if Emily had hit land instead of turning out to sea? In that case, the forecasters might have been blamed for any deaths. So understandably, hurricane research today focuses on providing the most accurate warnings possible.

To improve forecasting, hurricane researchers study the internal working of tropical storms firsthand -- by flying through them in airplanes outfitted with sophisticated radars and other instruments. After some 1,500 flights through dozens of storms, they've made progress. But a few tenacious problems remain, like the fact that forecasters can't always predict whether or how much a hurricane will intensify before it hits land. That's a problem for people in the path of a storm, who need to know if it's enough just to nail plywood across the windows or if they should leave town altogether.

The need for better hurricane forecasting may become more urgent in the near future. Gray's research suggests that the Atlantic is overdue for a dramatic upturn in major landfalling hurricanes. Since the end of the 1960s, hurricane activity has been relatively…