The past 7 days have featured prohibitive dryness across Eastern Europe, Western Russia, and into the Northern Black Sea region. The ECM 10-day rainfall anomaly outlook indicates the Black Sea region to Southwest Russia stays mostly dry while Europe showery conditions persist and reach far Western Russia.

The latest week 2-5 outlook across the North Atlantic tropics indicates above normal risk of a tropical system across the western North Atlantic basin. The 27C SST required to sustain an early season TC is farther north than normal as the tropical cyclone season is about to start.

NOAA/NHC issues their most active seasonal forecast since outlooks began earlier this century. The active forecast follows a similar theme with previous outlooks issued by CSU, TSR U.K., and CIC. Given the number of major hurricanes forecast for this year, monitoring the 86/87F SST (where major hurricanes are most likely) becomes extremely important!

A major severe weather event struck the U.S. Corn Belt yesterday with nearly 500 severe weather damage reports collected by NOAA/SPC including 23 tornado reports. Central Iowa to southwestern Wisconsin were the hardest hit. Flooding from excessive rainfall also occurred in this stretch.