Astromanía wrote:Do you guys think we will ever see a hurricane making lanfall in California this century or a category five hurricane making landfall in Mexico from the pacific? First one have happened just one time and the second one has never been reported for now, what do you think is more probable to occur first? what factors we need for both to happen, is Hawaii gonna see an hurricane making landfall this decade? Can a major hurricane make landfall in Hawaii again? Can El Niño form next year and the Epac outperform for the first time since 2018 or this trend is going to continue? I open this discussion before this expected below normal or near normal season begins
Re: California TC requires an epic +PDO much akin to 1939-1942 and 2014-18 as that warms up the west coast horseshoe dramatically. There’s some evidence that late 1850’s was similar, which featured the only known California hurricane strike, exhibited this pattern but the ENSO ONI and ERSST datasets don’t fully support this.
Re: Mexico Category 5 landfall is probably unlikely from the Pacific coast. Storms that recurve are usually getting 20-30 knots of shear even if they have a great trough interaction like Patricia did, which favors at least some weakening. Topography also likely contributes to a rapid fill in of systems prior to landfall as there’s only been 1 TC ever to hit the Pacific coast of Mexico with a cleared eye excluding the Baja California Peninsula. Best bet is probably over Baja but SST’s and close proximity to mainland Mexico would hinder a storm reaching that strength on a trajectory towards the peninsula and maintaining it all the way through landfall. Socorro Island might be the real best bet.
Re: Hawaii the slight warming of the tropics we are seeing in AGW moves the needle to where it has become much more viable for a storm to hit from the west and not spend much time over sub-26C SSTs. Furthermore, overall Hadley Cell expansion is likely to reduce shear over the region. Only a matter of time before they get a legit hurricane threat though topography of the island chain can lead to sudden altercations in storm track if the trajectory is from the ESE. A major hurricane probably requires the right timing with a trough that would steer it into the island chain from the south, so while rare, wouldn’t shock me to see it happen again this century.
Re: next El Nino I almost don’t wanna touch this subject because predicting El Nino is a lot like predicting a recession in that one often appears imminent a year or so out. But here I go anyway. The multi-year Niña is going to continue to lead to Pacific Coast ridging which will worsen the drought but also warm up the offshore waters that would favor at least a temporary blip in +PDO, under the best case comparable to that of 2014-18. The +PMM is often a decent predictor of a Nino up to 12-15 months out even if the initial Nino attempt fails, so I do think barring a moderate to strong Niña this winter, I do think conditions can be ripe for a solid +ENSO attempt, which would make a >100 ACE season plausible, and if we get a solid El Niño or really good cooperation with +PDO/PMM, potentially much more than that. At the same time, I can’t say we’ll ever see anything like 2018 again just because in addition to the very favorable background state, of how much that season’s ACE total was due to strong ridging that steered everything due west over warm enough waters. I also think, because we are headed towards an era of low ENSO variation right now, getting frequent strong Ninos is going to be difficult but multi-year +ENSO events should be somewhat more common, which would lead to longer boom and bust periods at least until -AMO returns.