Idalia made landfall as a major hurricane this week in a season where we’ve been anticipating what might become of a Battle Royale between the anomalously warm seas in the Atlantic and an ongoing El Niño in the Pacific. A reminder: we’re not even climatologically half way through the season yet…
Taking a look at the sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s little surprise we saw a strong landfall: in the week leading up to Idalia, the sea in its path was the warmest it’s been in since 1982 (when this particular sea temperature dataset started). The chart here shows the average sea temperature for the period of Aug 23-29th for every year for the past 40 years in the red box shown that broadly straddles the region through which Idalia passed and developed. Naturally other factors will always influence how a storm develops, but you don’t typically get the heavy-hitters of hurricanes without the warmer seas.
And now for the rest of the season…
