One thing to take away from this, notice over the last 30 years, we are experiencing the warmest SST anomalies since '97/98 and '15. Takeaway? Those were El Niño years.
The summer of 1997 was a below average hurricane season, with only 8 named storms, 3 of which became hurricanes, one of those major with only one of the eight storms hitting the U.S. mainland. Summer of 2015 was also a slightly below average season, 11 total storms, 4 hurricanes, 2 of those being majors. Only two hit the U.S. mainland, one of those being along the central TX coast (tropical storm Bill).
However, on the contrary, with us being in El Niño last summer, the Atlantic had an above average season with 20 named storms (which ranks fourth for the most-named storms in a year since 1950!) The 1997-98 El Niño was followed by a strong La Niña
(which you can depict in the picture above with the blue/purple colors in the Pacific region), which correlated to what became an above average hurricane season, with several storms hitting the mainland. A mild La Niña followed the 2015-16 El Niño, which also ended up being an above average season, with several of those storms hitting parts of the mainland (mainly the southeastern part of the country) and also in Central America.
The point in all of this: no El Niños or La Niñas are the same (hence the busy season we had last summer, despite being in an El Niño). However, with odds increasing we'll transition into a La Niña this summer, and coming off some of the warmer SSTs from the years I've mentioned above, history could repeat itself with an above average season, possibly hyperactive. As always though, all it takes is one to hit you for it to be a bad season. I'll be closely monitoring how quickly the SSTs out in the Pacific cool in the months ahead.
