Updraft: July 23, 2009 Archive

Quiet Atlantic hurricane season so far

Posted at 8:02 AM on July 23, 2009 by Paul Huttner (0 Comments)

An area of low pressure off the Carolina coast is the only system in the Atlantic today.

You can probably thanks El Nino for this one.

The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season is starting off on a very slow note. So far only one tropical system has reached the depression stage. There hasn't even been a named storm so far. The satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean above shows a clear lack of systems capable of developing into tropical cyclones today. The average date for the first named storm in the tropical Atlantic is July 10th.

The forecast are calling for a near average season this year. That would be about 10 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes. Official forecasts from the National Hurricane Center and Colorado State University are close to those numbers.

The development of El Nino in the tropical Pacific is likely having an impact on creating an unfavorable environment for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic this year. Even with lower numbers, it only takes one or two systems to make for a bad hurricane season in the U.S. so we'll need to remain watchful as we head towards peak hurricane activity in August and September.

PH

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Cool summer? Not!

Posted at 2:22 PM on July 23, 2009 by Paul Huttner (2 Comments)

Our cool July has many thinking that summer must be taking a vacation everywhere. That would be a short sighted assumption.

NOAA reports that June 2009 was the 2nd warmest on record globally. It was the warmest June ever for the world's oceans. Global temperatures in June were 1.12 degrees above the 20th century average. That is second to only June 2005.

Africa, Siberia, and southern Europe were among the areas much warmer than average in June. Central Asia, the Canadian Prairie Provinces, and the U.S. Northern Plains (that's Minnesota) were the areas cooler than average.

In the Twin Cities June was 0.7 degrees below average. July so far is running 3.5 degrees blow average for the month.

So why are we cooler than average in Minnesota? I can't pinpoint one easy meteorological answer. Jet stream patterns around the globe have been snaking wildly all over the place. Alaska has been warm in July, Minnesota has been cool. It's likely just meteorological chaos at work.

I've heard people say facetiously our cool summer weather must be "global warming" at work. It's too bad some people ignorantly say such things without any knowledge of the simple and easily accessible information to the contrary. A cool day or a cool month in Minnesota is weather, not climate. The 10 warmest years globally have all occurred since 1997. Our planet has not seen one cooler than average year in that time. Think about the odds of that for a moment.

PH

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