Upper ocean heat across the tropical North Atlantic basin rivaled the warmest values on record established last year to start 2025. However, upper ocean heat is shifting less impressive as June approaches and is now below the record warmth of the past 2 years and within the upper limit of the 2013-22 climatology. A notable decline is observed in May.

During the past month, both the GFS and ECM have produced dramatic too wet forecast bias across Southern Canada and too dry forecast bias across much of the U.S. AG Belt. The ECM is also too wet on the U.S. East Coast.

Operational models are indicating increased risk of anomalous wet weather across much of the Southern U.S. and Brazil during early-to-middle June. Support for the wetter tropical/subtropical weather is increasing as forecasts of the convection phase of the Madden Julian oscillation (MJO) are trending stronger east of the Dateline in the tropics to the American longitudes (phase_7 and phase_8).

Another week of severe storms and heavy rain in the Central/East U.S. followed by an unusually cool ending to May as indicated by next week's U.S. population weight cooling degree day forecast utilizing all forecast models.