Pre 2013 Hurricane Season Thoughts

With Hurricane Season fast approaching us ..we have decided to do a little research into this hurricane season and come out with a outlook for named storms, hurricanes and Major Hurricanes. 

One of the first things we look at is the ENSO Status and we see that currently we are in a neutral ENSO status and this looks to be the case with majority of the guidance though there are a few models that take us into an El Nino and a few that take us into a La Nina but the over all clustering of models keeps us in Neutral conditions. 

So we take a look back thru the years going back to 1950 to see what those Neutral Seasons looked like to get a rough picture of how many systems form during Neutral years and the # is rather quite low ..between 7 and roughly 11 .. Lets look at the years 

1952 Neutral Year result 7 storms

1959 Neutral Year 11 storms 

1960 Neutral Year 7 storms 

Perhaps an important thing to note in here is that each of the years so far had storms that impacted the east coast. 
1961 Neutral Year 11 storms 

1962 Neutral Year 5 storms 

1966 Neutral Year 11 storms 

1967 Neutral Year 8 storms 

1978 Neutral year 11 storms 

1979 Neutral Year 8 storms 

1980 Neutral Year 11 storms 

1981 Neutral Year 11 storms 

1990 Neutral Year 14 storms 

1993 Neutral Year 8 storms 

Last but not least is the year 2012 which was also a neutral year and that had an astonishing 19 named systems..

Looking back thru history to 1950 at Neutral years you can see that the main two regions that were under the gun were the GOM region and storms up the eastern seaboard. The other interesting thing we note is that all the neutral years were relatively low on the storm numbers until we got to the year 2012 when we seen a substantial jump.
We think this can be largely contributed to the fact that since 1995 we have been in a positive phase of the AMO.

In the positive phase of the AMO the water temperatures tend to run higher and this adds fuel to the fire when it comes to tropical cyclone formation. You can see the sea surface temperatures here as of the 25th and how along the coast they are running warmer then normal..

Interestingly enough we also find that the Caribbean has already obtained substantial Tropical Cyclone heat potential. 

So the things that we see standing out that is since 1995 cyclones have been on the rise as far as quantity but not necessarily quality. We also see that the GOM and the east coast were in play quite frequently so we are thinking that at least another storm along the east coast will occur this Tropical season. We also see things were relatively below average to average up until 2012 but since 95 they have been increasing despite the ENSO and that we feel is AMO related.

So with the AMO in a positive phase..the Atlantic waters warmer then normal.. ENSO status being neutral we think that this year could be a rather active year with 13-16 Named Storms ..which 5-7 would be hurricanes and 3-4 would become Major Hurricanes. We also with looking back at past history think that the East Coast could come into play once again..and the GOM would be the other hot spot. Of course we will also be dealing with the disappointing recurves that effect nothing but the ocean.
All and all looks to be another active season on tap for the 2013 hurricane season.. 
Stay tuned as we will be covering each and every season and pinpointing where we think the storms will make landfall..