Hurricane season doesn't officially start until June 1st, but a well known forecaster has already given his take on the 2008 season.

William Gray has predicted more storms than he did before the 2005 season, one of the worst years for hurricanes in history.

No one will soon forget the 26 named storms just three years ago, which included the deadly Hurricane Katrina. Forecaster Dr. William Gray, professor at Colorado State University, predicted only 13 named storms that year.

He uses several factors to predict whether a storm season will be more or less active than the normal activity period which ran from 1950 to 2000. During that time there was an average of 9.6 storms a year, but the past couple of years he's been off.

Dr. William Gray said, “We didn't do so well the last couple of years but that doesn't mean that our forecast for a very active year coming up is not going to be valid."

Gray has predicted a highly active hurricane season for 2008. He believes there will be 15 named storms and four of those will be considered intense, meaning they are at least category 3 storms, but people around here aren't worried by the predictions.

Jerry Leggett, a resident, said, "When I hear rumors of storms and everything I just take it in stride. It's not going to make me anymore concerned this year than I was last year."

Bradley Chambers, another resident, added, "They were off bad last year, so what does it really matter? They don't really know - anything can happen. Any storm could come, they could have more than that."

Emergency officials aren't getting into the predictions either, but they can be useful.

Mark Bowan, EOC Director, said, "They get more accurate certainly in predictions as time goes on, but the preparedness message is what's important, and that doesn't change. Irrespective of what these forecasts are the preparedness message is the same every year because we could get hit here in Bay County by a hurricane."

Predictions can be wrong, but it will only take one storm that you haven't prepared for to cause massive destruction.

Hurricane season begins on June 1st and runs through November 30th. The EOC encourages you to go to floridadisaster.org to find out to prepare for hurricane season.