Jonathan Belles of the WunderBlog posted a new article this week about the increasing potential for El Niño to return by late summer. While it is by no means a sure thing, the probabilities for a return to El Niño are increasing, and are higher than the probabilities for neutral conditions by the July-September period. If we do get El Niño conditions by late summer, that could mean a return to a less active tropical storm season for the Southeast, since El Niño’s strong jet winds often keep tropical storms from developing into full-fledged hurricanes. This could mean a drier late summer and fall, since about 30% of our tropical season rain comes from tropical systems in the Southeast. But of course it depends critically on where the storms actually go, as we saw last year with Hermine, Julia and Matthew. And even a weak storm can cause local flooding, especially if it is moving slowly.
