ACE (s) Not Wild

Here were are as we enjoy absolutely spectacular September weather, the question was once again asked of me "Smitty, where are all the hurricanes?"  Obviously, my circle of friends are well educated knowing that as we enter deeper into the month of September, hurricanes in the Atlantic basin are usually commonplace.  In fact, here are some climatological statistics for tropical storms and hurricanes for the Atlantic basin using the 30 year period from 1981-2010:

Named Storms per year:  12.1

Becoming Hurricanes:  6.4

Becoming CAT 3 or greater:  2.7

Here is the current wide angle view of the Atlantic via IR satellite imagery:

There are 2 areas of disturbed wx, the broad circulation just to the NW of the Yucatan Peninsula and the double barreled low over the Leeward Islands.  In fact, if the atmospheric energy could work in cahoots as opposed to stealing each other's thunder, a named system would likely develop just to the north of PR.  As of this writing, that does NOT look likely.

So what is this title about...ACE?  A relatively recent manner in determining how active a tropical season was or was not is not by simply looking at how many storms formed, but to apply a quantitative measure based on wind energy created by these tropical cyclones.  The acronym ACE represents "Accumulated Cyclone Energy".  For those of you who are truly interested or are like me and really don't have a life outside of weather and some good music, the ACE index is derived by summing the squares of the max sustained wind speed (knots) measured every 6 hours for each and every named storm while they are at AT LEAST tropical storm strength.  Here is the ACE Index as viewed climatologically for both hemispheres...clearly September is the high ACE month in the NH!

So where do we stand today?  In the Atlantic basin, we are obviously WELL BELOW NORMAL!  Our normal ACE Index at this point is 39...we are presently sitting at 8.3!  All of August and nearly 15% of September are gone!  The Atlantic better start kickin' to get even close to normal...here is the ACE as compared to the last 11 years...2013 is the black line running across the bottom.  The vertical blue line is today.

By the way, here are the numbers of tornadoes reported YTD...again, 2013 is the black line that is well below the other lines indicating a severe season with many fewer tornadoes as compared to recent years gone by.

And the prospects of a flourish of hurricanes is not really in the cards of many of the global models.  Here is the Euro showing some signs of life 7 days hence...

With all of that said, I'll leave you with a different kind of ACE...enjoy!

And enjoy the end of your work week...

Smitty

AA:  It's been a below normal season for tropical storms to date when using the ACE index.  But ask any of the land barons along the east and Gulf coasts; they are all quite fine with this lack of activity!