Drought fueling intense fires in California (most recently in Redding, CA) is forecast to shift north increasing fire risk drastically to Oregon/Washington for late summer.

July 2018 will produce the coolest ocean surface (compared to normal) in the main development region for North Atlantic hurricanes. Implications for the tropical cyclone season ahead is lack of "Cape Verde Storms" (typically the strongest hurricanes) but an active western North Atlantic basin of less intense storms.

There’s an old adage in climate: “change the month, change the pattern”. August 2018 is likely to validate that generalization. One cause of the change which climate scientists say is underestimated by forecasters is seasonality. As the greatest influence of solar heating on the northern hemisphere middle/high latitudes during July descends in August the climate pattern should naturally change.

The intra-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) is emerging in the outer North Atlantic tropics but struggling to produce any tropical waves due to an unfavorable environment including cooler than normal surface water. Encouragement from the convection phase of the Madden Julian oscillation to help ignite deep tropics waves and possible cyclones looks to be well into the distant future, possibly late August.