A couple of interesting things!

Myself with Dr. Neil Frank, SECAPS 2009...

I wanted to briefly touch on a couple of interesting things that I read today in two great blog posts! The first one came from Dr. Jeff Masters... In his blog today he talked about how the SST's in the MDR (Main Development Region) in the Atlantic (10N-20N) had the warmest May reading on record, according to historical SST data from the UK Hadley Center, which dates back to 1850... As Dr. Masters stated, there are gaps in the data before 1910, and during WW1/WW2... This was actually the fourth straight record warm month, and the warmest measured anomaly for any month ever recorded! The second warmest anomaly ever recorded was ironically last month! This just goes to show that the MDR is primed like we have never seen before... I highly recommend reading Dr. Masters blog, which is free to the public...

Dr. Jeff Masters Blog

The other interesting point came from Joe Bastardi... His blog is not free, but I highly recommend becoming an accuweatherpro subscriber... It's not cheap, but IMO it's worth every penny! They offer so many great products that I find very useful as a forecaster... Click here for much more information!

Joe talked about another May record... The AMO, like the MDR SST's, had the highest May value ever recorded... Another sign that the Atlantic is primed! He also talked about how the strong May - NAO values present more trouble... I have touched on this before in older posts, but basically if you have more blocking in the north-central Atlantic, it will lead to dropping of pressures to the south... The - NAO helps displace the Bermuda/Azores High further north and also somewhat west... This weakens your easterly flow across the MDR, increasing SST temperatures and leading to upward motion...

Joe also talks about how 4 interesting analog years come up when you look at a warm AMO/negative NAO in May... You get 1995, 1998, 2005, and 2008... All very active years... Add in the Atlantic tripole signature, which I have been harping on for a while now, and you get big problems! You not only have the setup for a lot of tropical cyclone development, you have the setup for a lot of US landfalling tropical cyclones!!! Just some food for thought!