Steve wrote:He was arguing a slightly different point. If you go back to the prior post, he challenged that the western basin was "supposed to be favorable but not so much..." Re-reading what he says in the second post, I don't completely disagree with his premise. But regardless, landfalls and number of landfalls usually matter regardless of what or where they are. You're probably not going to argue with the impacts of someone who lives in Cedar Key or Tallahassee by a system that generated, what, 3 ACE? It's real life in the Western Basin and it matters (usually). Hermine 1998 didn't matter whereas Frances did. Also, at the end of the day, did Gaston or whatever 94L does really matter all that much to anyone on this side of the world if they have half the season's ACE? You could make the argument that it matters because the heat was coming out of the tropics in a way that was less destructive to the Islands, North and Latin America. But that's different.
You don't have to pick and choose either or, you are allowed to use all metrics in a discussion. We are all smart enough to know you can accept both values. As a meteorological discussion it is valid and ACE is the more valuable metric. Names and numbers can be thrown out the window if you have a land impacting storm, we all are fully aware of that. I don't agree with his assessment either it's been a dull season, quite actually one of the most productive seasons of the past few and ending the Florida hurricane drought. Gaston was probably one of the best classical hurricanes we've seen (arguable with Joaquin).
There is going to be a burst of trades in the ENSO regions to bolster the La Nada a bit. Perhaps this may set up better conditions for more action in late Sept or early Oct.