A slow-to-start hurricane season could finally get its first named storm before the end of the week.

Weather experts are flagging several disturbances in the North Atlantic and a significant increase in thunderstorm activity in West Africa, a region that is the incubator of the massive storm systems that often turn into hurricanes that threaten the U.S. and Caribbean nations.

Over the weekend, a weather system moved out into the Atlantic Ocean, and "I think it has a big brother and big sister right behind. I am looking at three to four big systems that bear watching this week," said Jim Rouiller, senior meteorologist with Planalytics, a private weather-forecasting service. Storms get names when they become a tropical storm, with sustained winds above 39 miles per hour.

The first named storm in the Atlantic typically occurs around July 10, according to Dennis Feltgen, National Hurricane Center spokesman. By this point last year, there had been five named storms, including two hurricanes, Bertha and Dolly. The latter came ashore in South Texas on July 23.

This year has brought the longest spell without a first named storm since 1992, when Hurricane Andrew was christened on Aug. 17. That storm then slammed into South Florida and ranked as the most destructive hurricane on record -- until Katrina in 2005.

Federal forecasters said last week that the 2009 hurricane season would be "near- to below-normal" as an El Niño weather pattern of warming currents in the eastern Pacific Ocean develops, lowering the chance of an active season.

Hurricane season has taken on a particularly ominous feel in the Gulf Coast region because two of the past four years have brought intense and destructive storms. Indeed, three of the four most damaging storms in the U.S., according to industry group the Insurance Information Institute, have occurred in the past four years: hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005, and Hurricane Ike in 2008.

Ike slammed into Galveston, Texas, and caused an estimated $10.7 billion in insured losses, the fourth most damaging storm on record, according to calculations by the institute. Typically, the actual damage is twice as high as the insured losses.

The insurance industry says it is prepared for the new storm season despite the cataclysmic year the industry underwent due to financial, not meteorological, storms. "Despite the financial crisis, insurers stand prepared to pay all claims," says Robert Hartwig, institute president.

Hurricanes also can wreak havoc on energy prices as they can cause significant damage in production areas of the Gulf of Mexico and in the onshore Louisiana-Texas coastal region. The Gulf Coast contains nearly half of the nation's refining capacity, more than half of the U.S. crude-oil production and more than one-third of natural-gas production, according to Tudor Pickering & Holt, a Houston-based energy-investment firm.

But hurricane-induced price surges shouldn't be as severe as in past years because demand for oil and other petroleum products has slackened due to the economic downturn, experts say.

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