El Niño should knock some of the wind out of the sails of the 2009 hurricane season, federal forecasters predicted Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reduced its prediction for named storms by nearly a quarter but cautioned that the so-far snoozing tropics would still likely waken and churn up a near-normal number of storms.

``By no means, do we expect the season to be dead,'' said Gerry Bell, who is the lead seasonal forecaster for NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

The new ``likely'' range -- calculated at a 70 percent chance -- is seven to 11 named storms, with three to six becoming hurricanes. Of those, one to two are expected to turn into major storms with Category 3 winds of 111 miles per hour or higher.

NOAA's initial annual forecast, issued in May, called for nine to 14 named storms, four to seven hurricanes and one to three major hurricanes. An average hurricane season in the Atlantic basin, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, produces 11 storms.

Forecasters don't consider this year's sedate start, with only a single depression since June, a reliable indicator of how the next few peak months will shape up. But they do put stock in the emergence of El Niño, which formed rapidly in June and seems likely to strengthen through fall.

That weather pattern, marked by warming Pacific Ocean temperatures, typically tends to quiet the tropics in both storm numbers and intensity. Bell said upper level winds have already strengthened, meaning emerging storms will face wind shear that can weaken them or sometimes rip them apart.

Another prominent forecaster, William Gray of Colorado State, has already reduced his annual projection by one named storm to 10, also citing El Niño.

If 2009 does prove slower than the past busy seasons, it may just be a blip. El Niños come and go, but a wider array of conditions favoring hurricane formation remains in place.

Those patterns -- winds off Africa, tropical rainfall, warmer temperatures in the Atlantic and Caribbean, among other measures -- tend to last 25 to 40 years, Bell said.

`At present, we are 14 years into the current activity area and there's no indication it's coming to a close,'' he said.

NOAA does not issue predictions of where or how many hurricanes will make landfall, as the storms are steered by regional weather patterns that can quickly change.

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