Brent
Member
Not looking good.
Nearly basin-wide low shear anomalies? Looks like a good setup for lots of long-track hurricanes unfortunately.
I’ve always felt Recurvatures are a silly thing to predict well in advance. No one knows if the storm will exit Africa too far north or south yet alone all the other variables crossing the Atlantic.
Bottom line ... as always ... watch the "ef" out ...A cooler tropical Atlantic like we have this year favors weaker, slower developing tropical cyclones, which by virtue of having a weaker beta effect (which draws them poleward) gain more longitude which means they pose a greater risk of hitting something further west in the Atlantic basin. During El Nino seasons, the westerlies are deeper/more extensive over the western hemisphere as anomalous convection over the equatorial Pacific deposits excess momentum in the westerly jet. In addition to stronger deep layer vertical shear, we also tend to see an unfavorable large-scale steering pattern accompany El Nino hurricane seasons in the Atlantic, this year ENSO is virtually neutral or lukewarm w/ a slight lean towards +ENSO. Furthermore, the negative atlantic tripole that's persisted most of the winter (as it has the last several years following winter +NAOs) strengthens the Azores-Bermuda high via thermal damping. When you raise the SSTAs in the subtropics, this causes subsequent height rises there too, strengthening the easterly trades (obviously less favorable for TCG & intensification), but also making earlier recurvatures into the open Atlantic less favored. People will find particular extreme examples to try & invalidate these physical mechanism(s) playing their hand in forcing the steering pattern during the summer, but the reality is akin to a baseball player taking steroids, while it's hard to know if that will result in more home runs in one particular game, these factors influence the probability distribution function or chances of a hit in any particular season. Likewise, over a longer period of record w/ more samples, steroid use relative to no steroids at all will raise the chances of home runs and big home run games. Going into this season, a majority of parameters are playing their hand in influencing the PDF of hurricane landfalls on landmasses further west in Atlantic, including the US and they're generally pushing that probability distribution towards a higher risk of landfalls. That's all we can really say about it at this juncture but there's legitimate science behind my previous statements & I fully stand behind them.
The West African Monsoon (WAM) has been on fire thus far going into the summer which isn't good news for those hoping for an inactive season. Dr. Gray at CSU noted that even during years where activity was supposed to be low, the WAM would usually be a determining factor in either guiding a season towards steep inactivity or near to slightly above normal activity even when most everything else was unfavorable. I think we're probably headed somewhere in the direction of a blend of last year and 2017 in terms of total activity which would yield a solidly above average season, as for landfall prospects on the US, that remains uncertain but the lack of a huge +AMO in the basin and cool-near average SSTAs in the MDR is large-scale configuration that isn't conducive to rapid recurvatures into the open
Atlantic.
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Crazy how it took this long for a storm out there. I wonder why it's so quiet out there.finally a storm in the EPAC
El Niño is dying a quick death! When El Niño is in full throttle, they just get storm after stormCrazy how it took this long for a storm out there. I wonder why it's so quiet out there.
Crazy how it took this long for a storm out there. I wonder why it's so quiet out there.
Just pray for dust ...looks like the show will heat up on the EPAC side, the next name is Barbara and it looks like it could be a long tracker towards Hawaii in the long range
I suspect we won't have to wait too long into July to see the Atlantic start to show signs of something. Like said above the basin is on fire