seven hurricanes, three of them major, Colorado State University's noted hurricane researcher William Gray predicted Friday.

"It appears that we may have left the period of lessened hurricane activity and it is possible we could be seeing basic change in the long term global circulation patterns,'' he said in a release from Colorado State University's public relations department.

"This change could result in increased hurricane activity, perhaps somewhat similar to the very active period of the mid-1940s to the late 1960s.'' Prof. Gray and his colleagues are predicting the 1997 hurricane season will include 11 named storms, of which seven will become hurricanes, and of those seven, three will become intense hurricanes, meaning they will exceed category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Intensity Scale. The highest category is 5.

Category 3 hurricanes have sustained winds of 111 mile per hour or greater.

Among those keenly interested in Mr. Gray's predictions are Bermuda's property catastrophe reinsurers.

Members of the Island's insurance and reinsurance industry as well as the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI), part of the Bermuda Biological Station for Research Inc., gathered Friday at EXEL Ltd. offices for a synopsis of last year's hurricane activity and for the 1997 forecast.

Chris Landsea, post doctoral fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, hurricane research division lab, Miami, presented a summary of the 1996 hurricane season and gave the forecast for 1997. Mr. Landsea is a member of Prof. Gray's research team.

RPI is funded by Bermuda and US insurance and reinsurance companies, 13 in all.

The funding currently goes to about ten research projects focused on the predicting of tropical storms, David Malmquist, assistant research scientist at the Bermuda Biological Station, and with RPI, said.

"They (insurers and reinsurers) are interested in being able to assess the risks that tropical cyclones pose to their business,'' Dr. Malmquist said.

"Our role (the RPI) is to act as a conduit for the pubic dissemination of information. It is very important that our information becomes public.'' If Prof. Gray's 1997 predictions are accurate, it will mean 1995-97 will be the most active three year period in the about 100 years that hurricane activity has been documented, Dr. Malmquist said.

That contrasts with 1991-94, the most inactive.

Last year, Prof. Gray's forecast fell short. He said 11 storms would form evolving into seven hurricanes, three of which would be intense. The actual figures were 13, nine and six, respectively.

For 1996, he originally forecast eight, five and two. On June 1 he revised the numbers to ten, six and two. The forecast was later updated to 11, seven and three.

Prof. Gray's initial forecasts are revised June 1 and August 1, the onset and height of the hurricane season respectively, which runs through November 30.

Prof. Gray and his research team base their forecasts on a number of global weather features from El Nino to direction of equatorial stratospheric winds at 68,000 to 70,000 feet and from rainfall in the Sahel (south of the Sahara Desert) to temperature and pressure in west Africa. Caribbean sea level pressure, Atlantic surface temperature, pressure in the northeast Atlantic and tropospheric winds are also factors.

The forecasts apply to the Atlantic basin and do not predict landfall.

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