The 2005 hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin will be more active than the historical average and countries in the Americas should be prepared, meteorologists who met up at a regional committee meeting of the UN World Meteorological Organisation warned last week.
Forecasters are predicting 11 tropical storms and hurricanes this year compared to nine hurricanes and six tropical storms in the region last year and more than 2,000 people lost their lives.
The US National Hurricane Center in Miami will release its forecast in May this year.
Storm and hurricane activity in the region is greatest in the late summer and early autumn and can destroy thousands of tonnes off production of key export crops such as bananas and grapefruit as well as cause millions of pounds worth of damage to infrastructure.
• Meanwhile, the 2004 hurricanes continue to take their toll on Florida citrus growers as the state's orange crop dropped to the lowest point since the Great Christmas Freeze of 1989.
The state's estimated orange crop for the 2004-05 season dropped to 151.2 million boxes, according to the US Department of Agriculture's latest estimate released last Friday.
That represents the lowest crop since the 110.2m boxes produced during the 1989-90 season, when millions of boxes of citrus were lost to one of the worst freezes in the state's history.
Friday's USDA estimate reduced the orange crop another 1.8m boxes, all of it from the early-mid crop.
The USDA held the grapefruit crop estimate at 13m boxes, the lowest since the 1935-36 season and 68 per cent below the 40.9m boxes harvested in 2003-04. The hurricanes accounted for almost all that loss.
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