The Colorado State University hurricane prognostication team has slightly lowered its prediction for this season.

On Wednesday, William Gray and Phil Klotzbach dropped from 17 to 16 the number of named storms - of tropical storm strength or higher - they expect will form.

The team stuck to its December forecast that nine of those would become hurricanes and five would grow to major hurricanes, of at least Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with top sustained winds of at least 111 mph.

In 2010, the team's June prediction was 18 tropical storms, 10 hurricanes and five major storms. It was close: There were 19, 12 and five. The 1950-2000 average is 9.6, 5.9 and 2.3.

The team, which is in its 28th year of making predictions, never says how many or where storms will strike along the United States' 3,700-mile coast from Maine to Mexico.

But its new report gave a 48 percent chance - the norm is 31 percent - that a major storm will hit the East Coast, including peninsular Florida.

Emergency managers stress that forecasts are merely intellectual exercises. Whether they call for one hurricane or 100 doesn't change the requirement to prepare for storms.

A quiet forecast or a busy one affects no one, managers said.

The Colorado State team and others are looking at El Niño, the phenomenon of warm water in the eastern Pacific Ocean which mostly hinders hurricane development, and its opposite, La Niña. Forecasters expect the current La Niña to be gone by the heart of the hurricane season.

Meteorologists have said the region has been in a cycle of high activity since the mid-1990s, and the Colorado State team expects that to continue another 10 to 15 years.

Since 1949, the team said, five seasons have had conditions in February and March that were similar to those seen the past two months: 1955, 1996, 1999, 2006 and 2008. All but 2006 were busy hurricane seasons, the team said.