User blog:YE/2014 Pacific hurricane season July projection

Hi everyone. Summer is in full swing and the North American Monsoon is giving me rain every few days. Other days it is sours into the triple digits and many desperate Nevadans like myself seek shelter in pools for relief.

Living up to the hype?
In May, you could tell that the season was hyped, and expectations were higher than ever. A series of WWB's have sparked an El Nino and for a while, it appeared it would be a super one. Everything looked almost perfect quite remarkable for an inactive phase. Shear was low, vertical instability was high SSTS' were fairly warm. A pre-season invest only added to the elevated expectations.

Yet somehow someway, it lived up to the expectations. At least for a while. Actually, no it did not. It exceeded them. When Amanda formed towards the end of May, most were thinking it would be weak, maybe just maybe becoming a hurricane. Yet it shocked everyone, and deepened at a super fast rate, and came a notch short of Category 5 intensity. In late May!!!

After a few weeks of slightly less activity, we got Cristina. It seemed Amanda was repeating itself, and this instantly drew 2014 comparisons amongst the basins all time greats. It seemed like a magical season was underway, and 2014 appeared to be living up to the hype! Even the media briefly picked on the thought of the end of the basins's low activity era.

Then after a few duds, we feel to earth. People stooped talking about the season, and I would not say it underperformed really, but we just came back down to earth.

Still, all in all, I was very impressed with the first third of the season especially the first four weeks of the season.

Outlook
18/7/5. Conditions look a little less conductive than they did two months ago (most notably the MJO is practically nonexistent now), but the activity seen in the past 10 weeks have been a bit more than I expected. However, given the mixed signals favoring this likely El Nino thus far as well as the latest global trends, there initially appears to be considerably less certainty than normal. Upon further investigation based on the recent global trends as well which will likely continue if this El Nino does not form as comparisons with other Generation VI El Nino seasons, it is probable that the season will be in the high teens. Vertical instability is somewhat above normal and shear is a bit below average and latest models show a very conductive environment over the WDR (from 116W to the dateline) dominating the region for the next week or so (though as you get out of the deep tropics shear as always rises significantly. The above forecast assumes that the El Nino will not get stronger than currently expected, and if it does, the season could end up much more active than indicated above. The confidence of my aforementioned forecast is medium.

Generations: What are they?
Generations are periods of time of around 20 or so years that either saw a high number of active or inactive hurricane seasons. Currently, we are in what I call Generation 7. These are mostly based on PDO phases. Note: I made this term up, and it is not an official term used by any US government agency.