A combination of factors has spurred veteran meteorologist William Gray of Colorado State University to boost his predictions for the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season.

Those elements include an early tropical cyclone season in the deep tropics, "hurricane-enhancing" ocean-surface warming in the eastern and central tropical Pacific and low-pressure patterns at sea level in the tropical Atlantic.

Gray and research partner Philip Klotzbach now predict there will be 17 named storms this season, rather than 15. They have boosted the number of hurricanes by one to nine and the number of major hurricanes from four to five.

In Gray's call for a very active season, he predicts there is a 43 percent chance at least one major hurricane — packing sustained winds of at least 111 mph — will make landfall on the Eastern Seaboard, including the Florida peninsula.

On Tuesday, Tropical Storm Edouard brought heavy rains to the upper Texas coast. The fifth such storm of the Atlantic hurricane season packed winds near 65 mph but weakened to a tropical depression later that day.

The 41-page forecast update from the Tropical Meteorology Project researchers is available at http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/.

— DAVID ROGERS