Sunday’s model runs of the GFS and ECMWF have nearly abandoned the idea of tropical development in the East Pacific or Caribbean. None of the 12z Sunday GFS or ECMWF runs showed development of a tropical cyclone in the Western Hemisphere over the next 10 days. In fact, meteorologist Eric Blake of the National Hurricane Center practically said to disregard Caribbean storms shown on the GFS model at this point in the season, posting on Twitter: “GFS seems like it is up to its old tricks of bogus early storms in the NW Caribbean- serious overforecast bias usually so caveat emptor!” The 06z Sunday GFS run showed the development of a strong tropical cyclone in the Caribbean in under a week, but the system was dropped by the 12z and 18z runs.  As Blake noted and what I said yesterday, the GFS model has a known problem of forming early-season Caribbean “ghost storms” and it does not appear as if the Caribbean will see any tropical development in the near future. In addition, less than 10 percent of the ECMWF ensembles show development in the region – not a good sign for development. Wind shear also remains very high in the region, over 30 knots, according to the University of Wisconsin.

There is still a slight possibility of long-range East Pacific tropical development, but only the unreliable CMC model showed development there on Sunday’s 12z run. Yesterday’s 12z ECMWF run showed the development of a significant hurricane in the East Pacific, but the storm was dropped by Sunday’s 12z run. Based on recent trends I give only a 10% chance of seeing a tropical cyclone form in the Atlantic or East Pacific over the next 10 days – and if something does form soon, it will almost certainly be in the East Pacific.

It is still only May, and the peak of hurricane season is over three months away. The time for tropical development in both the East Pacific and Atlantic will come eventually, but it doesn’t look like it will be this month. We will have to keep watching over the coming months. I will be back for another post tomorrow explaining the concept of Accumulated Cyclone Energy and how it is used to calculate the activity of Atlantic hurricane seasons.