The Northwest Pacific tropical cyclone activity has recovered to near normal for the season featuring 23 tropical storms, 13 hurricanes, and 7 intense hurricanes. A late season surge in activity features 4 systems now including Tropical Storm Yinxing heading for North Vietnam, Typhoon Toraji departing the Philippines, WP27 forecast to become a typhoon heading northwest possibly toward Taiwan, and Man-Yi forecast to become a major typhoon later this week.

The October-2024 Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) was -3.81, the strongest negative (cool) phase in the 1950-2024 record. Previously, the strongest monthly value was -3.55 observed in July 1955. The current record-strength -PDO is part of a 5-year cool phase beginning in January 2020. Additionally, the ongoing -PDO regime sustains the cool long-term cycle of PDO which began in the late 1990’s.

In 2025, the ENSO forecast WAS neutral ENSO and possibly a second attempt at La Nina later next year. That possibility remains but is considerably weaker. Added to the potential scenarios of ENSO phase during the second half of 2024 is an El Nino analog and shift by ECMWF favoring Nino34 SSTA shifting into an El Nino.