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[berberry]

This is just one of many reports in the press recently about how relatively hot this past winter was. Galveston, Texas saw 33 daily high-temperature records fall this season, with Houston and other cities near the Gulf seeing their warmest seasons on record, by far. The sea surface temperature in the Gulf has never in recorded history been warmer at this time of year than it is right now. Here in Central Mississippi we've had much warmer than usual conditions, and I think we've also seen a lot of record highs broken this season. We had what truly felt like winter for one weekend, back in early January. That was it!

I think we may indeed be facing a devastating severe storm season. I sure hope no Atlantic cyclones make it into the Gulf this year, because if they do it sounds like they will have ideal conditions for growing into some of the most massive storms we've ever seen here.

[ET21]

It'll be an excellent chase season for sure. 

[Max Rockatansky]

Don't people in the weather community general say that "this is the year" for bad storms basically on an annual basis?  When I lived in Florida every friggin May and June people would be ranting like the apocalypse was coming and there was almost no storms of substance.  The worst I went through was two tropical storms, the only hurricane I actually was ever in was Hurricane Bob back in 1991.

[ET21]

Don't people in the weather community general say that "this is the year" for bad storms basically on an annual basis? 

Those looking for ratings, click-baits, and likes. I would rather alert the public about certain anomalies if trends suggested an increase in intensity and occurrences and back it up with data like the article from the Washington Post about this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/03/22/gulf-of-mexico-waters-are-freakishly-warm-which-could-mean-explosive-springtime-storms/?Sdfsdfdsfsdf&utm_term=.3a46d765a166

Nowadays the internet is flooded with "meteorologists" using one model run showing the Apocalypse scenario just for clicks and traffic. 

[SP Cook]

Don't people in the weather community general say that "this is the year" for bad storms basically on an annual basis?

Yes they do.  Combination of "click bait", politics, and it is just easy on a slow news day to recycle a report on how to stock up on non-perishable food and batteries. 

Clearly science has advanced to the point that we can predict the weather on a short-term basis, I see no evidence, however, that predicting that predictions of a season being worse or better than "average" is any more than guessing.

[Max Rockatansky]

Don't people in the weather community general say that "this is the year" for bad storms basically on an annual basis?

Yes they do.  Combination of "click bait", politics, and it is just easy on a slow news day to recycle a report on how to stock up on non-perishable food and batteries. 

Clearly science has advanced to the point that we can predict the weather on a short-term basis, I see no evidence, however, that predicting that predictions of a season being worse or better than "average" is any more than guessing.

That was always the thing was I was doing emergency hurricane preparation for businesses.  Really the only way to semi-accurately predict if you were going to get hit was something you'd only know maybe 3-4 days out from a storm coming your direction.  Even if that was the case even the most predictable models usually had the storm going in all sorts of direction, really you had to prepare if you were in the "cone of uncertainty." 

[Alex]

Doesn't matter how high the temperature gets, if upper level winds stay strong all season long, hurricane development is suppressed. That's been the general trend for the last decade now.

[berberry]

Doesn't matter how high the temperature gets, if upper level winds stay strong all season long, hurricane development is suppressed. That's been the general trend for the last decade now.

And that's the key point I've taken from a lot of the press coverage this got last week. I didn't see it being sensationalized, but maybe I missed that. I try avoid the more sensationalized sources of news coverage these days.

The thing I got from what I saw and read was not that we're going to have a more active than usual season, but that if any storms do make it into the Gulf or form in the Gulf they may have ideal conditions to work with and therefore a hurricane worse than Katrina is possible.

I don't see predictions like this every year. I also don't see how predicting an active season of upper level winds is more reliable that predicting warmer waters in the Gulf. Until we get a few more orders of magnitude along in the accuracy of our models, we aren't likely to see flawless forecasts months in advance. That doesn't mean that meteorologists should just shut up about it and I hope they don't, just as they didn't 100 years ago when forecasting conditions 12 hours ahead was not very reliable.