August 10, 2023 Hurricane Season

Two waves to watch in Atlantic next week

NOAA seasonal forecast update today ramped up the Atlantic to 60% chance of an above-normal season, and 25% near-normal, which is up from 30% above / 40% near / 30% below normal issued in May. It seems the May forecast was quite a hedge with uncertainty about the developing El Niño and warm Atlantic ocean temperatures.

14-21 Named Storms including 5 already in the books

6-11 Hurricanes including Don, and 2-5 Major Hurricanes

From the NOAA CPC webpage announcing the forecast update:

This updated 2023 seasonal hurricane outlook reflects the expectation of competing and non-reinforcing large-scale climate factors during ASO, and this combination of factors have been historically associated with Atlantic hurricane seasons with a wide range of activity.

The upward shift in all of the ranges of activity in this updated outlook compared to those in our May outlook reflects that we are more confident that local conditions will likely counterbalance the remote influences from El Niño for enough of ASO to allow for more activity during that period.

It seems the experts at CPC, NHC, and AOML are rolling the dice with the Atlantic SSTs and local conditions beating out the typical negative influences with El Niño.

My thoughts: potential El Niño Modoki pattern could mean a hurricane season like 2006: 10 Named Storms, 5 hurricanes, and 2 majors.

Note: Saharan Air Layer is squelching tropical wave activity this summer, just as in 2006.