Fears of another record breaking hurricane season have further diminished with one of the world’s leading hurricane experts downgrading forecasts for the rest of the year.

William Gray and his team at the Colorado State University have downgraded their expectations for the 2006 Atlantic storm season, predicting there will be five hurricanes during the current season, which is two less than their initial forecasts earlier this year.

However, the team is warning that two of those hurricanes will be classed as intense.

Gray's team had warned earlier this year that the season could well be above average with some 17 named storms, but the figure had been reduced in August prior to the latest reduction this week.

“We now anticipate that the 2006 Atlantic basin tropical cyclone (TC) season will be considerably less active than the seasonal activity we anticipated in our earlier forecasts and in our updated August 3rd forecast. We now expect that the 2006 hurricane season will have slightly less hurricane activity than the long-term average,” stated the report. “This is due to an unexpected increase in tropical Atlantic mid-level dryness (with large amounts of African dust) and a continued trend towards El Niño-like conditions in the eastern and central Pacific.”

The average season is set at 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes per year.

Gray’s team also warns that there is still the potential for a sting in the tale. “Landfall probabilities for the US are above average for September and near average for October based on an above-average forecast of Atlantic basin NTC for September and an average forecast of Atlantic basin NTC for October,” it added.