During the past 3 months the number of large regions of soil moisture change across the globe favored drier conditions (18) versus wetter adjustments (11). Currently, the most profound drought areas stretch across Canada which is mostly unchanged during the past 3 months except drier into Northwest Territories, northern and western Europe which expanded east into Western Russia, a strengthening intense dry region in northeast Russia and ongoing drought which gained intensity since March in southwestern Africa and much of Australia.

During the past several weeks a very La Nina looking SSTA pattern has emerged off the west coast of South America as the Humboldt Current is actively churning to the surface cold subsurface water and surging that chill toward the equatorial region. The influence on ENSO forecast models is to cause suppression of the weak El Nino and introduce a La Nina risk later this year.

A tropical disturbance is forecast to form in the northeast Gulf of Mexico later Wednesday and drift southwestward and then west while intensifying to a tropical storm eventually making landfall (as a tropical storm) Saturday on the central Louisiana coastline. The preliminary forecast track is based on the highly reliable ECMWF model.

Despite approaching mid-summer, forecast confidence of the 2019 North Atlantic tropical season is not particularly confident and with good reason. Expected is the inhibiting influence of upper westerly shear across the tropical North Atlantic caused by El Nino holding number of hurricanes down BUT potentially offset by a forecast of a warmer than normal tropical North Atlantic. As it turns out, on July 6 the North Atlantic tropics have unexpectedly cooled and the El Nino is fading (and NOAA is more concrened about La Nina develping).