The hurricane season is by no means over with three major hurricanes still expected to hit the Atlantic basin before the season officially ends on November 30, experts say.

Climate expert Professor William Gray at Colorado University has upped his June prediction from 12 to 16 tropical storms, nine of which will be hurricanes and three of which will develop into major hurricanes, making the 1995 season one of the busiest in three decades.

However, Professor Gray was unable to predict where they would hit.

"We hope many of the storms that do form either will not come ashore or will miss populated areas,'' Professor Gray said. "However, the more storms there are, especially the intense or major hurricanes, the more likely we are to see storm damage.'' Hurricanes Allison and Erin have been the only major hurricanes so far this year but typically mid-August to mid-October is the season's busiest period with an average of six named storms forming in August and September compared to just 1.5 in June and July.

While Allison hit the sparsely populated regions of North Florida and Georgia in early June with top winds of just 75 mph, Erin hit twice in Florida, first in the east-central coast and then in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an average hurricane season, ten tropical weather systems are given names and six of those become hurricanes.

To make his predictions, Professor Gray and his team study equatorial stratospheric winds, West African rainfall and temperature and Atlantic ocean and Caribbean sea-level pressure readings to predict storms.

A mixture of factors including an end to the long drought in the Sahel region of West Africa, a decrease in "El Nino'' the warm-water phenomenon in the southern Pacific, unusually low sea-level air pressures in the Caribbean and strong upper-level easterly winds are directly related to the storm-heavy season.

In particular a link has been made between the relatively mild hurricane seasons over the past few decades and the end of a 25-year drought in Western Africa. When the region is wet, the number of hurricanes is thought to rise dramatically.