re: El Nino's effect on Hurricane Season

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This year's El Nino isn't panning out to be as strong as everyone thought. Either way, as we have seen before in weak seasons all it takes is one (see 1992, 1957)

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El Nino forecasting is pretty difficult and the models seem to struggle with it. I have seen some talk about the -PDO regime that we have been in and how you typically don't see a strong Nino combined with a -PDO but if you look at the recent trends with the PDO:



You may notice something interesting.

This season looks almost as bad as last season looked good for tropical cyclone development (not that tropical cyclone development is a good thing but it happens, so deal with it). There is a developing El Nino, +PDO (maybe transient) and
-AMO (maybe transient) and these typically tend to favor less tropical activity.



Who knows what will happen but it is probably safe to say that we won't see the parade of short lived name wasting systems spinning up in the Bay of Campeche like we have recently.

As others have stated, it only takes one storm to cause a lot of trouble. We still can't forecast the MJO, atmospheric kelvin waves, state of the teleconnections, etc. very far in advance with any accuracy. Any number of those could align properly and set the stage for a significant hurricane, even with an unfavorable base state.

ETA: dry air & shear!