A wet soil moisture change zone emerged in June focused along and just east of the Continental Divide and across the western Great Plains. Operational forecasts in recent days have indicated the wet trend over the West-central U.S. during June will shift eastward and into the Midwest U.S. drought region in July, a somewhat unexpected regime change.

The Nino34 SSTA region in the east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean shifted warmer last week to +1.00 as El Nino steadily strengthens and approaches moderate intensity. Waters off the northwest coast of South America (Nino12 region) are the warmest since May 1998 which along with 1982 and 2015 marked the strongest El Nino on record.

In the latest example of the influence of a rapidly emerging marine heat wave (MHW) has on warming the atmosphere aloft to propel high pressure ridging and weather patterns featuring sudden extreme heat and dryness, the “highest alert possible” for heat in Beijing, China is issued.

Tropical cyclone formation in the central North Atlantic tropics during June is unusual. The catalyst this year is a favorable low shear environment and enhanced early season inter-tropical-convergence-zone (ITCZ) enables by much warmer than normal SSTA.