The first thing I wanted to clarify is this: all months with the exception of February have had a tropical cyclone occur in the Atlantic Basin.

Secondly, I see that you made your post on March 3rd. Lets see...it's the 18th of March now...and most of Florida still has experienced a cool down. And indications are, that when the temps. finally do cool down, they will still be above normal.

For one thing, it is not very easy to go finding the reasons for why the off-season storms developed. Land and water temps are not an easy way to get a gauge on this, simply because records are only easy to find for about 10 years back (1993). You can probably find more years, but you'll have to shovel some dough down on a website that gives local climatology.

There are some rules to remember with these storms. For one, the tropical AND subtropical ones during the offseason seem to have a STRONG bias towards El Nino years. I think the last off-season storm we had was in April of 1992, which was a moderate El Nino year. And yes, that year was known to be warm in S. Florida, I think...

This leads me on to another path way. Typically, hot temperatures over Florida (as we are having this year) seem to be indicative of ridges in the SE US during the peak of hurricane season. I don't know why, but when I look at climo, it seems most of the years with early season storms usually have SE US storms. Of course, these tend to be El Nino years, and there will usually be one "bad one". 1992 was case in point.

BTW, this reminds me of 1998 in Florida. Early in the year, the conditions were stormy. Then, it stopped slowly (like it seems to be doing now) and we had HOT temperatures and brush fires in the state all summer. The 1998 hurricane season wasn't pretty either for Florida and for many other areas of the US and Carribbean (remember Mitch?). The only (big) difference with this year is that the ENSO phases we are (and will be) dealing with aren't so extreme. So, we should have a weak La Nina later this summer, but it won't develop in only a month and a half as was the case in 98.

Geez...how did that become so long winded?