more than a week ago i mentioned that SOI had gone negative. it's still there, so this may be another event like the february SOI spell that generated that kelvin wave which knocked the 1/2 region SSTs back into weak warm. this is the straw about to break the camel's back as far as my preseason forecast goes... the SOI pattern may be oscillating, but when it goes positive it never gets strongly so... the negative phases early this year have been very strong. we will probably still be in a weak el nino mode going into the season, and i'm getting the idea that's going to be the pattern for the rest of 2005.
as far as numbers go i'm not going to presume that weak el nino conditions will have a significant reducing effect. for 2003 and 2004 that wasn't the case, and 2002 wasn't all that mild of an el nino year either.
a little heads-up. the wmo ought to verify the name retirements for 2004 fairly soon, and give us the remade 2010 list. four storms from the '04 list you know you can kiss goodbye. so we get a new 'c' (i'm all for clyde to follow bonnie), an 'f', and the 'i' and 'j' replacements also.
odd note: the forecast high for sunday is in the 50s here, with partly cloudy conditions. it's odd to get a sunny day that cold this late in the season around here. pretty amplified pattern we're in. this keeps up, we'll have stretches where the east coast is open for business during the hurricane season.
HF 0707z23april