I have always agreed that hurricanes need a combination of hot ocean below and cold air aloft. AML constantly reminds us that the marine layer is a big player in SoCal weather and so it is all over the ocean. I think the marine layer would be thicker as the temperature of air rises faster than the ocean surface. That's what we see with warming; the air temperature may increase 1.0 while ocean surface temps lag behind, increasing only 0.1. Along the ITCZ, I see lighting of thunderstorms only get active in the eary morning hours between midnight and daybreak. The air cools sufficiently to allow warm surface air, rich with water vapor, to rise and initiate the thunderstorm building. There are many other atmospheric factors involved of course, but with less optimum time to form thunderstorm clusters, I think hurricanes should be less frequent. With a large and well defined thunderstorm cluster and the right upper atmosphere, hurricanes will form just as readily as the storm itself keeps the upper air cool. This despite global warming and deeper marine layer. My idea may be trashed if the NOAA predictions for hurricane numbers for 2024 is correct.

That is not how it works. At all. There are a multitude of ways atmospheric circulation could change to alter precipitation patterns worldwide, some of which would amplify extremes, others which would dampen them. “Wet gets wetter, dry gets drier” is a myth perpetuated on social media by people who lack understanding of climate dynamics. It’s possible that will indeed be the outcome, but it’s also possible the inverse will be true. Or both could be true for limited periods of time. We can’t possibly know.

The mechanisms behind “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier” are some of the most established principles of climate science. There’s nearly a 100% chance that PNW rainy season precipitation in the next 30 years will be higher than the previous 30. I agree that attributing < 10-20 year trends to climate change is dangerous (which is why I said in my post that I doubt you can attribute the recent wet springs to climate change), but over the longer term averages the trends predicted by the climate models will win out.

Beautiful morning on the weather deck. The landscape seems to already recovering from the harmful drenching just a matter of hours ago. The resilience of nature is truly astounding.

The similarities to 2010 are indeed uncanny. Not perfect, but hard to get closer than this. Especially on a subseasonal timescale.