CALMER SEASON EXPECTED THIS YEAR
The 2017 hurricane season is shaping up to be much calmer than last season regarding overall activity and intensity.
Last season, the overall activity was 135 percent of normal. This upcoming season is advertised to be just 85 percent of normal with 11 named storms, with four becoming hurricanes while two will be intense hurricanes.
So far this year, we have been monitoring a neutral ENSO pattern with a high chance for an El Nino developing by late August.
The early season should include a favorable environment for tropical depressions and a few storms to form across the warming Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. However, just when the waters will be reaching their maximums, the El Nino is expected to increase wind shear across the Tropical Atlantic which would keep a lid on the developing tropical systems.
Water temperatures across the entire Atlantic Basin are running cooler than normal. A slightly stronger and larger area of high pressure has been establishing itself across the western Atlantic waters. These higher pressures have slightly increased the easterly trade winds which has increased the cold water upwelling in the west Atlantic and Caribbean Sea. These cooler waters will decrease the opportunity for tropical waves to intensify and also limit the strength of those tropical systems that do form.
I also want to remind you that a quiet hurricane season does not mean a dead season with zero activity. We have had many seasons where we had little overall activity through the Atlantic Basin, but still had extreme weather conditions with flooding and tornadoes strike Central Florida.
Remember Tropical Storm Fay in 2008 with its seven days over Florida, 11 inches of rain in Melbourne, tornadoes and hundreds of homes flooded?