TheStormExpert wrote:txwatcher91 wrote:IMO the warmer waters in the Western Atlantic are more concerning because this is where the chances for landfall significantly increase. Without a strong blocking high in place the Cape Verde storms have a pretty good chance of recurving harmlessly out to sea. With the cooler SST's in the East Atlantic this may just allow the waves to stay weaker and head west until they hit the warmer waters near the Caribbean. We also still have about 1.5-2 months for the water anomalies to change in time for the prime part of hurricane season as well.
With chances increasing of an El Niño or El Niño-like conditions the Caribbean should be just as hostile if not more hostile than the Tropical Atlantic.
https://twitter.com/philklotzbach/status/1011747343933235200
I think a fantastic point is made by Tolakram (above) "....If there's one common theme to seasonal predictions it seems that too much weight is always placed on something". Seems to me that those particular "somethings" each year are 1) ENSO 2) SST's, 3) SLP's and 4) MJO Strength/location. So, the one big question as I see it is ..... if a combination of dry sinking air and/or strong upper westerlies happen to be causation for very low instability in the Caribbean, and as Txwatcher91 shrewdly points out ENSO is not a present factor (could/may be in coming months but too early to tell), then "what" present pattern inducing condition seems primarily responsible for the very low instability in the Caribbean? Next question then is how likely will this pattern generally persist during the upcoming 60 days, and what global or regional pattern shift might we look for as a precursor of downstream instability increasing for that region? As a side-note isn't the Indian Ocean overall exhibiting very high instability right now? Generally, it has been my observation that an active Indian Ocean portends to an active Atlantic basin. On the other hand, I can't say that I've heard whether the N. Indian Ocean has actually spun off an average (or above average) number of tropical cyclones thus far. I do recall one noteworthy and rare tropical cyclone hitting the Somalia region in May though.