Some thoughts regarding the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season.

To open, it's blasted through my own and all official forecasts, so at least those of us who underbid are in good (bad) company ;-)

And despite frontal activity scouring close to home, it may actually continue to be busier than average for longer still - possibly even into the final month of the season, or even the year (with the "official" hurricane "season" ending on November 30, but with any "season" total always actually including from first named storm to last in any given year regardless of date).

2018 has been a very good year for subtropical storms (which later transitioned into tropical). The ocean-atmosphere state that has made this so very possible is still in place. The most recent example of this is now Tropical Storm Oscar, that might also very well become a Major hurricane - and possibly also a long-lived tropical cyclone, further beefing up this season's ACE.

A very intriguing footnote to the above is also that the Mediterranean and Black Sea region (calling them a region together, even though no RSMC has yet to really step up with taking responsibility for them), has seen a half dozen - you read correctly - six - subtropical/tropical cyclones "Medicanes" this year to date. Arguably strongest of these at landfall, Zorba, caused catastrophic surge, rain and wind damage in parts of the region.

In addition, perhaps adding to the numbers as we now know them, odds favor post-season reanalysis to look at upgrades to one or more of our named systems so far: Tropical Storm Gordon (Possibly attained Cat 1), Hurricane Helene (Possibly attained Cat 3), and Michael (Possibly attained Cat 5) all jump out for review.

And as always there exists the possibility that NHC finds a previously unidentified subtrop or tropical cyclone. (September 98L comes immediately to mind as a candidate for review).

The big picture view from 50,000' is that 2018 has certainly been overachieving.

So what happened? It's a very good question and one which experts are already looking at and are sure to do so for some time to come.

There may be some other large-scale events that get special attention in their endeavor. One, 2018 is the first year of more reliable records that every single basin in the Northern Hemisphere has been above average. Another, while an El Niño is still forecast to form this year, it has had a delayed full onset, and obviously would thus impact just too late to prevent the busy year in the Atlantic underway.