With El Niño failing to materialize, hurricane forecasters are starting to adjust their forecasts for the number of Atlantic hurricanes in 2017 upward. El Niño acts to prevent the development of the storms by effectively “blowing the top off” of the tropical waves, keeping them from developing the deep vertical circulation needed to grow. Here is one forecast that was bumped upwards this week, from the Colorado State University: https://webcms.colostate.edu/tropical/media/sites/111/2017/07/2017-07.pdf. It would not surprise me if NOAA and others followed suit in the next week or so. Of course, the real key is where they will make landfall, and none of the predictions are able to be that specific.
