No matter the time of year, you can almost always find a tropical storm or hurricane somewhere. Right now, they're pretty much confined to the Southern Hemisphere, where it's early autumn. There, these storms are called tropical cyclones. Here's a satellite image of a tropical cyclone in the South Indian Ocean heading toward the island of Madagascar, which is off the east coast of Africa.

In the Atlantic Ocean, hurricane season doesn't officially begin until June 1, but Dr. William Gray, a noted hurricane researcher, has already made his forecast for the season. He's predicting 10 tropical storms, and that's about average. In recent years, tropical activity has been above average, with 14 storms in both 1998 and 2000 and 12 in 1999.

The strength of Dr. Gray's forecasting isn't so much the exact number of storms, but rather his ability to identify years with either lots of storms or very few. So this year's near-average forecast can be considered good news, suggesting that this won't be a particularly busy year for hurricanes. But having said that, it only takes one intense storm coming ashore to make a hurricane season very memorable.