No Action in Tropics But Jesse Going on Vacation

I did a slight modification to a couple of tropical graphics that we drew today :)

Of course, my being there (with camera in hand) may hinder tropical development next week, our point is that we are heading into the historical "upslope" of the season. The article we're running today says "Strong, upper-level, westerly shearing winds, which have been persistent across the Atlantic Basin since June, have begun to weaken and retreat farther north as they normally do this time of year." That said, we're still predicting an abnormally slow season so I wouldn't be surprised to see us go into the first week in August with few if any storms.

Here's a graph of storm frequency from the NOAA Hurricane FAQ:

We also made the graphic below which points out something interesting: Even though we are behind the trend of past years at the end of July, historically only one storm usually forms before August 1st, on average. It's another one of those perception-vs.-statistics things.