The United States is likely to be battered by a hurricane in the coming months, statistics show.

The warning comes on the eve of the 2002 Atlantic hurricane season, which starts tomorrow.

Andrew Castaldi, head of Swiss Re's catastrophe and perils division, said that as long as records have been kept, - about 100 years - there had never been three consecutive years where the US was not impacted by a hurricane.

For the last two years the US has escaped a direct hit from a hurricane - although tropical storm Allison hit the US last year it was not strong enough to be classified as a hurricane.

However, Mr. Castaldi said: "I have to believe that the industry is better prepared for an event the size and magnitude of Andrew or greater."

He said that since hurricane Andrew, technology had advanced to the point where it's paid dividends to collect information on the risk and model possible outcomes of severe storms.

As far as the effect of a hurricane the magnitude of Andrew hitting the US, Mr. Castaldi said: "Companies now know what they could potentially loose whereas before hand they may have been somewhat blind to that fact. So they are better able to financially prepare for it and stay in business the next day.

"Most of the reinsurers and many of the insurance companies in the catastrophe business, we know that this is what we are in business for, we know what our liabilities are, we know what we need to do to sustain ourselves going forward, so we are adequately prepared for that type of event."

He also said that unless companies were totally mismanaged, he did not think they would run into any capacity issues in an event such as Hurricane Andrew. "They should be adequately prepared to withstand that type of loss if they are responsibly managed, and I have to believe that they are because the financial rating agencies, A.M.Best, S&P, in their financial requests that they send to insurance companies, they also ask them a lot of catastrophe exposure information to try to estimate the kind of losses they could have and if they would be prepared financially."

He added: "Even if a company doesn't want to be responsible, they are almost forced to be responsible." Concerning changing premiums, Mr. Castaldi said: "From a reinsurance perspective... the premiums or rate adequacy that we have received still don't match what was post-Andrew."

He said despite the fact that there had been no major catastrophes recently, insurance and reinsurance companies were loosing money over the last three years and that even before September 11 rates were going up. "Rates in general had to rise in order to approach the level necessary levels for companies to make money."

He said the stock market had not been profitable in the last few years and so increasing rates had to come into play.

For example, Mr. Castaldi said: "Even the state politicians in Florida, or anyone with any business sense, would have to recognise that the rates were definitely inferior and inadequate before Andrew based upon the types of exposure there."

However, Mr. Castaldi said rates were approaching normalcy. "The rates have gone up more commensurate with the risk," he said.

"From a CAT standpoint, my opinion is that the rates are not immediately post hurricane Andrew," although he said they were not as low as they were a year or two ago.

Mr. Castaldi added: "There is still ample capacity available and I think that there is a lot of new Bermuda money that has come into play that has a high appetite for CAT risk."

August will be the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Andrew which - until September 11 - was the costliest US disaster ever with the insurance and reinsurance industry paying out some $20 billion in claims.Colorado State University Professor William Gray predicts this year will be the seventh successive year of increased hurricane activity and he says the lucky run of 19 straight hurricanes missing the US mainland should come to an end.

The average land strike over the past century had been 56 percent, but the academic, who is professor of Atmospheric Science, puts the likelihood of the US being hit this year at 86 percent.

This season he is predicting eight hurricanes as opposed to nine last year, four major hurricanes, the same as last year, and 13 named storms - two less than in 2001. The last seven years have been the most active seven consecutive hurricane seasons on record.

Last year set a number of records for hurricane season, including the first time nine hurricanes have been formed after September 8.