Matthew Gross

Happy Hurricane Season to all who celebrate!

Getting this sort of MJO-driven reinforcement of the developing #ElNiño with a massive westerly wind burst is a pretty good indicator that this event is going to be a very strong one. No sustained easterlies to interrupt the last Kelvin Wave, and this next WWB should push the warm pool even further east. Probably why even the *relative* SST anomalies are pushing 3-3.5C in some of the latest forecasts.

A freight train of warm water chugging beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean is a big reason why a super El Niño may form this year. Ocean waters have peaked around 7.5˚C (13.5˚F) above average, breaking records. And now, it's nearing the western shores of South America 🧵

I don't understand why only a few people, like Mathew Gross, understand just how bad this whole combination of Super El Niño on top of out of control climate change + fertilizer shortages and energy crisis all hitting at the same time is going to actually be. It kind of reminds me of the flooding situation that forecasters were warning about in the Carolinas ahead of Helene- everyone was just kind of like, ok, we get it, there's going to be a lot of rain, but nobody could comprehend just how terrible the situation was going to actually get until 3-4 days after all the missing people couldn't be found alive. If you have any friends in places around the world where famine could hit later this year, please make them aware of how bad it's going to get, and make sure they have a plan to stay alive!

@CyclingGall4 The famines will likely be heavily concentrated in parts of Africa and Asia.

@HurricaneAddict lol!!!! America could use a famine people are fat AF

Lurking below the surface in the equatorial Pacific is possibly the most impressive blob of above average ocean temperatures we've ever recorded since we've had the ability to measure this stuff. When that enormous concentration of bath water reaches the surface over the coming weeks and months, it's going to release devastating consequences around the globe throughout the second half of the year. Get ready for severe droughts in parts of South America, Africa, and Australia, devastating monsoons in southern China, and a roaring southern jet all winter long in North America. When you combine this with the fertilizer crisis bubbling as a byproduct of current global events, there's going to be crop failure on a level most of us have never seen during the closing months of 2026. Hard to see how we avoid widespread deadly famines across multiple stretches of the planet at this point.

@DownHomeTD Actually, the Atlantic hurricane season specifically should be much quieter than normal in 2026. The very same hot waters that will cause the Super El Nino in the Pacific should work to limit the number of storms in the Atlantic.

@HurricaneAddict Hear this same crap every year close to the start of hurricane season. Basically we are all going to die from thirst or drowning, but when it's all said and done your insurance says not covered. Sorry, I was getting ahead of myself.

Just so everybody is clear, it's not the El Nino alone that's so uniquely problematic. It's the combination of the strength of the El Nino with the coming fertilizer shortage. Both of these are slow moving and enormously impactful events that have already been set in motion and won't fully manifest until the back half of the year. However, once they show their face, their impacts will feed off each other and exacerbate shortages around the globe.

@AndyHazelton It's probably completely random, but it's also odd how all of the mainland CAT 5 hurricane strikes over the last 50 years (granted there's only two) have come in years Hawaii also came under attack from a hurricane.

One thing that's a common theme of years with big Hawaii threats (Dot 1959, Iniki 1992, Lane 2018) is the +PMM, with big warmth west of Mexico extending into the Central Pacific in the region where East/Central Pacific TCs head west. Well, guess where it's warm this year (1-2C above normal across the board, even accounting for the global mean)?

The terrifying view of the tornado near Enid, Oklahoma this evening as it crossed the road. Join our live streams & watch the full chase edit coming up via @DanielShawAU/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@DanielShawAU/

But wait, there's more! Signal of another WWB (and perhaps some TC activity) early next month as the MJO comes through the Pacific again. There won't be a shortage of these in the summer!

@HurricaneManWx This is a great chart, and it will be interesting to see how it progresses in the coming months. As it does, it might be a good idea to swap 2024 with either 1997 or 2015 as the other highlighted year to compare how this year does verses the Super Ninos in the timer period.

The current SST for the ENP is approximately 28.5C whereas the climatological mean for mid-April is closer to 27C. ​The 2026 trajectory (🔵) is currently positioned several standard deviations above the historical envelope and is currently running above 2024/2025. While a seasonal rise is normal, the rate of warming over the last 30 days is significantly higher than the 1991-2020 average in the Pacific.

Big changes afoot in the Pacific. The past month of WWB activity has pushed a great amount of warm water to the dateline, and the +PMM continues to intensify. We'll soon have the powerful warm pool surface, and by the end of the month may have a solid El Nino signature

California’s coastal waters are the warmest ever recorded for April. A severe to extreme marine heatwave is underway off the coasts of California and Baja California, locally reaching Category 5 intensity. There is just a ton of warm water across the Pacific, with a strong to severe marine heatwave conditions extending from the Marshall Islands all the way to the California coastline. Expect a very humid summer in Southern California, along with major impacts on marine ecosystems. With a strengthening, potentially Super El Niño expected by autumn, if there were ever a year for a hurricane to make landfall in SoCal, this would be it. We’ll be watching closely for El Niño to rapidly emerge in the coming weeks.

Of COURSE noted weather enthusiast Mike Trout homered off Weathers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! h/t @NJ_baseball

Severe thunderstorms capable of producing golf ball sized hail and wind gusts up to 60mph have fired across southern Minnesota this evening. The good news for Red Sox vs. Twins is the front to the north is slowly sagging south and has just about reached Minneapolis. It needs to pass through the city to ensure these cells stay south of the game.

@FerragamoWx It absolutely adds another layer of depth to an already great project, and it also further underscores who is overdue for a rough encounter with Mother Nature.

@HurricaneAddict Thank you! The return periods I think give the map a unique perspective.

After months, I was finally able to combine both my hurricane landfall and return period datasets for the U.S. into one massive infographic. I absolutely love this. What an insane map to look at!

@NWSEastern @NOAANCEI That map from above should have already filtered out the potentially inflated totals. Here's how the one that took everything at face value looks like:

@HurricaneAddict @NOAANCEI Their analysis only uses values in the official database which are COOP, CoCoRaHS, NWS offices and Airport values. Anything else is not used. Additionally, some public reports were found to be inflated or questionable due to drifting in a few states.

The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) is a scale that was developed in 2004 to rank high impact Northeast snows. @NOAANCEI maintains an updated list for these storms at ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitor… which also explains the methodology. This February's storm was recently added.

I guess the closest thing I could tie it to is the way I look at golfers. I don't care how many regular tournaments they win if they don't perform in the majors. It's all about those few weeks per year when everything is on the line. (I understand and am fine if others view this differently.)

I'm admittedly different when it comes to weather model tracking. I care about the big ticket events and pretty much nothing else. I'm far more likely to be able to tell you exactly how each model performed on a high end storm from 15 years ago than I am about how they generally did on determining if it was partly sunny or partly cloudy last week. I do look at verification scores, and that tells me how everything is doing during quiet periods when I'm paying less attention, but what I really, truly care about is if a model locks onto a major solution 7+ days out and is able to hold it all the way until its time to use the mesoscale models just before the event. In other words, how does it do when lives are literally on the line? And to be honest, I see a gap between the overall verification scores of these machine learning models and how they've done in their (admittedly limited) sample of big ticket events. Once they're the first to lock on to and nail something with serious buzz, I'll be right there with the pom poms next to everybody else. But as long as we're missing that element and that gap remains between their top of the charts verification scores, I'm also going to point out the failures to deliver on the monsters.

HURRICANE SEASON: The NHC released today their report of the best performing forecast models from last year's 2025 season. In a first ever, the artificial intelligence Google model took gold as the best performing for track forecasts the entire year, beating the NHC forecasts. In a not so shocking turn, the GFS (American model) was dead last in accuracy. I should note, for intensity forecasting, the NHC edged out the Google AI weather model to be #1. This is a glimpse at the future how our training of AI weather models and machine learning is going to exponentially aid in the advancement and accuracy of major weather forecasts.