Great News!: February N Atlantic SST Anomalies Down A Lot

[mike815]

I TOTALLY AGREE

[Scorpion]

Besides..wouldn't stronger systems tend to recurve? The cool SST's would keep the systems in check until they get well under the Bermuda High.

[MiamiensisWx]

I have another point to add. The warmest SSTs are typically far west near the islands in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Florida, and Gulf of Mexico. In the eastern Atlantic, the warmest waters are usually near the African coastline, cooling down in the middle of the Atlantic slightly before warming up again farther west.

[drezee]

by the same token the NW Caribbean and GOM is warmer then last year.

[Weatherfreak000]

Agreed.



I don't see why major forecasters are seeming to show lowered activity. (Like that recent forecast and the prediction map where Lousiana wasn't even marked). I mean come on that's crazy. This all seems like a ploy to bring a sigh of relief to everyone.


But i'm not falling for it, hell if Max Mayfield tells me this season could definitely mirror 05' I think i'm going to take his word for it. And with all do respect to anyone that disagrees look at the GOM SST's right now.


NOT Good News.

[jasons2k]

Yep, and it won't be long before the shelf/bay waters are on the plus side.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Another thing there is very little pack Ice in the North Atlantic, compared to the average, and what is there has a relatively small area of coverage and low thickness levels. Melting ice tends to cool the waters as a whole. Little ice = little cooling. With that stated. I also do not understand this 'Oh my God the Atlantic is turning into an Ice Cube, lets downgrade our numbers crap'. It is only the first week in March people.

[Extremeweatherguy]

pretty much the bottom line is that this hurricane season will be yet another active one, and Cat. 4 or 5 intensity storms look very likely.

[DoctorHurricane2003]

The problem is that people here fail to realize that last year was an extreme anomaly, and for whatever reason think that every season after 2005 will be like it.

People thought the same after 1995, and look what happened.

13, 14, 15, 16 named storms is still active. Do not fall into the mind frame that they aren't. And furthermore, cooler waters in the "areas that you just don't give a damn about" parts of the Atlantic are much more important than you think, and can easily affect the ITCZ and the strength of storms down the road, and where/how they develop.

I'm sorry, but not everything relies on the Gulf of Mexico.

[SouthFloridawx]

13 - 16 storms is above normal and before last year we would have been happy to be able to track 13- 16 storms in one year. If SST's don't go very much above normal and la nina goes to neutral or even el nino and we don't have the set up we did last year, don't necessarly expect to be able to track 29 storms out there.

[KWT]

Your quite right DoctorHurricane2003 and southfloridawx2005, 13-16 storms are certainly still decently above average!!

However "but not everything relies on the Gulf of Mexico." tell that to those that suffered at the hand sof Katrina, it only takes one big boy to get into the gulf and those SSTA in there will suddenly make every other SSTA looks so petty.

[Derek Ortt]

the mean number of storms for the last 11 years is 15. Maybe its time to reconsider what we consider to be a normal season, since the 11 year mean is 15, 50% about the 10 that we have been so used to

[KWT]

Derek, I presume 11 years means since the start of the more active cycle in the atlantic basin??

whats even more scary is that the last three years have come out with a average of 19 TS a season, though the ultra-active 2005 does rather warp those figures.

I agree tohugh Derek, I think its time to have a re-think about whats 'normal'

[Scorpion]

All of the powerful hurricanes in 2005 occured in the GOM and Caribbean. 2005 had so many named storms due to the huge amount of mediocre TS's that formed from the very warm SST's in the Atlantic. This year, the GOM and Caribbean are the same temp, the Atlantic is cooler, so there will probably be a bigger proportion of majors than run of the mill storms.

[skysummit]

The way I see it right now, is if the Atlantic is cooler, however, still warm enough to support tropical activity, the storms will not get the chance to "peak out" in the Atlantic but more so hold their own until the Carribean or Gulf....then, BOOM

[Air Force Met]

All it takes is one. Andrew was in an El Nino year.

...and there were only 4 storms the year Alicia hit.

[gatorcane]

I really don't understand the big deal about SSTs dropping 0.0005 degrees in the Atlantic. Every powerful storm last year went BOOM in the GOM, Caribbean, and Bahamas. Those areas are well warm enough year after year.

[DoctorHurricane2003]

Like I said, I would much rather have 1 Alicia or 1 Andrew than a year like 2004 or 2005

[Weatherfreak000]

Well the setup is obviously FOR a 2005 year on terms of harsh landfalls because the SST's near where it counts are all higher then 2005 which is obviously much worse. Just the SST's off the Lousiana Coast this year shows a VERY VERY Frightful aspect there. What if Katrina had those SST's you think the chance of it weaking so much before landfall could have been even slightly mitigated?


I don't even wanna think about that, fishes in the Atlantic are irrelevent. If the ITCZ isn't strong enough to develop early on because of lower SST's it'll be less likely to be picked up and sent off to sea and likely drag it's way closer to where the warmest SST's are now and boom out. And this was all made SO painfully obvious with TD #10 and Katrina.


So where is the good news really? I honestly can't see it, and if I had to drop money i'd bet we see 20 storms regardless based on the fact we are allready seeing little systems fighting to develop (that little cut off in the Carribean a while back).

[gatorcane]

There is clearly NO good news here. I agree with, Weatherfreak000, I actually think we will see many homegrown monsters this year unless things drastically change. As we saw with 2005, only a small part of the Atlantic real estate caused all of the grief. The rest of the Atlantic did not contribute much other than allow weaker systems to not get pulled northward. I also think the CV train will establish itself this year as well because I don't see two years back to back with only a nominal CV season.

AND there is a huge ridge establishing itself over the western Atlantic as we speak and will stick around for an unusually long time for this time of year according to the GFS (at least a week). That will cause SSTs to rise in some of the critical areas of the western Atlantic and Caribbean this week. We should check the SSTs a week from now.