(Oranjestad, Aruba) – A team of weather forecasters in Aruba have predicted that this year’s Atlantic Hurricane activity will be far greater than in previous years. This news has not been welcomed with open arms from any of the popular Caribbean island destinations.

The team, dubbed “The Mystics” by locals, consists of employees of the Aruba Butterfly Farm (open every day from 8:30 – 4:30), who have been collecting data on hurricanes for over thirty years.

“This is going to be a tremendous year,” Tony Cox, co-owner of the farm said. “My wife and I started this farm in Aruba to be as far west as possible from the paths of hurricanes, but this year…”

Tony is a student of the “butterfly effect,” and the rhythm method of science. The butterfly effect is a phenomenon where small causes in a system can have large effects, most famously depicted as a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the globe, and causing a powerful storm on the other side. A further example of this would be pulling the plug from the bottom of a large swimming pool: both the water and the puller are likely to be sucked down the drain, thus having a wide-ranging effect on the family of the puller. This is also true in the area of time travel, as was explored in Ray Bradbury’s famous short story, “A Sound of Thunder,” as well as in the sudden disappearance from history of the Great and Mighty Emperor Calistin Magnalonia of the United Empires of the Western Hemisphere in the late 1950’s.

The Aruba Butterfly Farm has hundreds of butterflies, which means that petabytes of data need to be processed in order for an accurate prediction to be made. In prior years, thousands of Aruban school children contributed their arithmetic skills to correlate data from hundreds of butterflies with climate data from around the world. This year, all of the children were given iPads, which initially slowed down the processing until parental restrictions were turned on. It has been said by Aruban tourists, some with graduate degrees, that these children with their iPads form the most powerful supercomputer in the world for each five minute period per day in which the children’s attention is held captive.

At a press conference in Oranjestad, Tony Cox revealed that this year’s processing indicated at least 75 category 5 hurricanes, having sustained winds over 157 mph (252 k/h), according to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Many of these hurricanes are expected to react to each other, causing a super-butterfly effect that could produce the first category 7 hurricanes on record.

This is both a surprising and frightening outcome, especially as tourism is at an all-time low throughout the world. Mr. Cox warned that there was a 5.7% chance that his findings were inaccurate. “I didn’t have time to account for the new mandarin oranges that we’ve been feeding the butterflies this year,” he said. “The difference in the levels of activity of the butterflies this year could, in fact, be a result of the reduction in butterfly phlegm caused by the introduction of the mandarin oranges into their diets. However, I seriously doubt that is the case”

Walmart stores throughout the Caribbean have been noting that their stock of rain ponchos and cactus covers has nearly been depleted.