The Gulf of Mexico is hot, but hurricane season is ominously quiet
The Gulf of Mexico is blazing hot, but hurricane season — temporarily, at least — has hit a lull, a surprise to researchers.
The Gulf of Mexico is blazing hot, but hurricane season — temporarily, at least — has hit a lull, a surprise to researchers who see plenty of ingredients brewing in the Atlantic but no storms on the radar.
The National Hurricane Center on Friday was not expecting tropical cyclone activity for at least a week.
“There’s nothing coming up. It’s extremely quiet, which is odd, given how hot the Atlantic is and the trend toward La Niña,” said Philip Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University who specializes in Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts. “There’s a lot of head-scratching right now.”
The natural La Niña climate pattern, which scientists expect to take hold this fall, is closely associated with hurricanes. So are warm waters in the Atlantic, and ocean heat content in the Gulf of Mexico is the highest it has been since 2013, according to data from the University of Miami.
Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic were trending about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. The trend is especially pronounced in the Gulf of Mexico.
Rating: 5