This is the subject of an article today in the Houston Chronicle by Eric Berger on the RMS expert elicitation. It is also the subject of a draft paper that I have begun to circulate for comments. The paper’s title is:

United States Hurricane Landfalls and Damages:
Can One to Five Year Predictions Beat Climatology?

the paper begins as follows:

The answer to the question posed in the subtitle is, unfortunately, no. This paper explains why skillful prediction of United States hurricane landfalls and damages is not possible in the short term, defined here as a time period of one to five years. A “skillful” prediction is one that improves upon expectations derived from the statistics of the long-term historical record.

If you’d like a copy for comment, please send me an email, pielke@colorado.edu.