tolakram wrote:How will we know until late October? We could have a record September but an early halt to the season will still leave us well below normal. Labor day is the 5th this year, and if we have no storms and nothing on the models then in my opinion something is wrong. The Tonga theory is interesting, it's never happened before (that much water vapor) but it will take years, or might be impossible, to say for sure that was it.
Random thought inspired by this:
What if the 2021 season played out in reverse?The season starts with Wanda in late June lasting into July, breaking the pre-season streak. The Atlantic remains quiet during July and August, while the EPac keeps pumping out hurricanes like Rick and Pamela.
Folks get impatient as we head into late August, seeing the basin is at 1/0/0 with near-record low ACE. But at the tail end of August, Sam forms and becomes a 135kt long-lasting CV storm.
Conditions remain hostile after Sam, and model canes keep busting as they turn out to be much weaker, aka Peter and Rose. Weather fans start to write off Sam as a fluke and cancel the rest of the season. But after mid-September, Larry develops off the African coast and becomes another long-lived, annular major hurricane.
Right as October begins, Ida forms in the Western Caribbean, and later RIs into another 130kt Cat 4 slamming into Gulf Coast. Activity continues in October with Henri in the subtropics and a few storms in the Caribbean, namely Grace and Fred, the former become yet another major that RI'ed until landfall. Even in late October/early November, the basin still produces a rare, late-season MDR hurricane, Elsa.
A few shorties keeps bumping up the storm totals: Danny, Claudette, Bill, and Ana as a December off-season storm. The season finishes above-average in ACE, TS and MH counts.
This is roughly the 2021 season flipped around September 15. Not a perfect analogy, but you get the point. Clearly, such a season will be treated much more harshly by weather nerds, but the overall activity is the same.
I won't be surprised if 2022 turns out to be like this (not saying it will happen). 2019 and 2001 are very similar to this, as well.