We’ve been watching a robust tropical wave that rolled off the coast of Africa a couple days ago. Typically this isn’t an area that we’re looking at for development this early in the season, as water temperatures usually aren’t warm enough yet. However, this year there are near-record warm water temperatures in this part of the Atlantic.

There isn’t much working against the development of this system over the next several days, and it’s likely that at the very least a tropical depression forms sometime during the first half of next week. The good news is that the long term threat for any part of the U.S. coastline is extremely low right now. This system will either make an early turn up into the North Atlantic, or get eaten up by high wind shear across the Caribbean. It’s something to watch, but there’s certainly no cause for concern right now.

The next name on the list is Bret.

It’s June after all, so you wouldn’t expect to see much happening in the tropics quite yet. Just like many recent years we had a quick start to the season with a short-lived Tropical Storm Arlene form on back on June 2, and not much since then. As of now, no development is expected across the Atlantic basin over the next 7 days.

On Thursday, NOAA declared that sea-surface temperature anomalies in critical parts of the Pacific Ocean have warmed enough that an El Nino event is now officially underway.

El Niño is one of three possible phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and forms when sea surface temperature anomalies reach at least 0.5 °C warmer than normal values. NOAA says their latest measurements recorded the anomaly at 0.8°C above average. 

This is the first time we’ve been in El Niño territory since 2019, and if past events are any indication, we’ll likely end up with a quieter than normal hurricane season when all is said and done.

The reason for that is during an El Nino pattern, the polar jet is typically resides much further south, and our subtropical jet is much more active. Ultimately this leads to higher than normal wind shear across the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and parts of the Atlantic.

Of course, quiet season or not, we need to prepare the same way. All it takes is one storm hitting your area to make it a bad year for you.