Open Thread

by Mary

As Turkana mentioned, 2010 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record which makes for some additional challenges. According to Jeff Masters, this indicates that the hurricane season in 2010 will most likely be in the same ball park as other years with intense hurricanes, the last which was in 2005.

The high April SST anomaly does not bode well for the coming hurricane season. The three past seasons with record warm April SST anomalies all had abnormally high numbers of intense hurricanes. Past hurricane seasons that had high March SST anomalies include 1969 (0.90°C anomaly), 2005 (1.19°C anomaly), and 1958 (0.97°C anomaly). These three years had 5, 7, and 5 intense hurricanes, respectively. Just two intense hurricanes occur in an average year. The total averaged activity for the three seasons was 15 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and 6 intense hurricanes (an average hurricane season has 10, 6, and 2.)

This year looks to be particularly challenging year for those in the gulf.