For those of you who watch SSTs in the tropical Pacific as a lead indicator for the coming season, the last three months have been a confusing time. The weak but well-distributed warm anomalies that blanketed the Pacific during the fall, centered near the dateline, were whittled down as a cool spike cleaved into them by February. During the last month that spike has shriveled as warm patches have blossomed again in the equatorial waters. What SST profile we have as the season approaches is still tough to determine... SOI was strongly negative all February and early in March, then a solid run of positive since then. Warm conditions are fighting to hang on, with cool conditions trying to assert themselves at times. ENSO Neutral with a variable patchwork of SST anomalies in the basin, like much of last year, may be the rule. What we've generally had so far isn't all that different from 2004... not the signal most Floridians get too excited about.
Other factors at play include a generally cool Western Atlantic away from the Gulf Stream corridor and a warm Southeastern North Atlantic. This general profile would favor development in the MDR and near the East Coast.. with less than ideal conditions elsewhere in the subtropics. The overall circulation pattern in North America has been the winter version of what we had last summer.. shifted slightly eastward. There has been a general tendency to medium-amplitude, quasi-stationary circulation features for most of the winter.. that sort of thing in the summer can be bad if it's anything but a Western Atlantic trough.
The bottom line is, a change from the quasi-stationary feature and neutral Pacific SST pattern would likely be a good thing, since its presence during the core of last season put five of six through the same longitudinal recurvature belt.. right through 80-90w. Seeing La Nina try to come back, with the Western Atlantic trough most recent episodes have featured, would probably have a lot of Floridians breathing easier (though folks in North Carolina might not like it). MJO has been on the downlow since 2003, so still waiting on that factor. Without that signal showing much signature, it's probably going to be a normal distribution sort of spread on the season, without the clumps of storms.
I'll keep the numbers at 17/11/5. Will probably tone them down very slightly when I lock my season numbers in May. I'm not going to place a bullseye anywhere until then either.
HF 1838z20march