In the Southeast Climate Monthly Webinar today, Jeff Dobur from the NWS Southeast River Forecast Center posted this graphic showing how the weekly distribution of tropical storms looked for three subregions of the Southeast. The three regions are the Florida Peninsula, the Carolinas, and the Alabama-Florida Panhandle-Georgia region. As you can see from the graphic below, there appear to be two peaks in the weekly distribution, with a lull in activity in weeks 28 and 29, the second and third weeks of July.
This makes sense since early storms come primarily from the Gulf of Mexico due to early warmth there, and then the main tropical storm development region kicks into high gear by mid-August when the strong waves coming off of Africa encounter the summer-warmed sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic north of the equator. This year we have already seen our first wave come off of Africa, but conditions are not yet ripe for development for these early waves, so it is the most likely that any early storms that form this year will probably come from the Gulf. You can read a lot more about tropical storm climatology, including maps of where storms are more likely to form by month, at https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/.
