Dengue fever is endemic in over 100 countries and there are an estimated 50Á100 million cases annually (1) . There is no vaccine for dengue fever yet, and the mortality rate of the severe form of the disease, dengue hemorrhagic fever, ranges from 10-20% but may be greater than 40% if dengue shock occurs (2) . A predictive method for dengue fever would forecast when and where an outbreak will occur before its emergence. This is a challenging task, and truly predictive models for emerging infectious diseases are still in their infancy.