Forecasters at Colorado State University came right out and said it on Thursday: "We anticipate that the 2024 Atlantic basin hurricane season will be extremely active."The forecast, issued on Thursday, sights a transition from El Niño to La Niña as a primary contributor to the extreme forecast."When you've got a La Niña, you've got weaker winds and less wind shear, and that can allow hurricanes to develop," StormTeam 5 chief meteorologist Cindy Fitzgibbon said.Atlantic ocean-surface temperatures are also primed for possibly explosive development of tropical cyclones. "Water temperatures right now (early-April) are more typical of June or July," Fitzgibbon said. Warm water temperatures serve at the fuel for tropical cyclones to develop and intensify."When you combine the two (lower wind shear and warm water temperatures), it does look like it could be a very active season," Fitzgibbon said.Forecasters at Colorado State are predicting 23 named storms in the Atlantic this hurricane season – the highest number of named storms predicted in a pre-hurricane-season forecast by CSU.CSU is predicting 11 of the named storms to become hurricanes (sustained winds of 74 mph or greater). Five of those hurricanes could become major hurricanes (111 mph or greater sustained winds).The CSU researchers said that 1878, 1926, 1998, 2010 and 2020 are all analog years to look back on. This means that those years were at least similar in global weather patterns and Atlantic sea-surface temperatures to this year.“Our analog seasons were all very active Atlantic hurricane seasons,” Phil Klotzbach, senior research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU and lead author of the report, said.