2023 TEXAS REVIEW
2023 will go down as a moderate to strong El Ni ñ o year. El Ni ñ o typically means tropical action in the Atlantic basin is suppressed. 2023 also had some of the warmest water temperatures in the Atlantic basin on record. Warm water is of course the jet fuel for tropical systems. Because of the unusually warm waters, the 2023 hurricane season will go down as the most active El Ni ñ o season ever recorded as 20 named storms formed in the Atlantic this season. The previous high for an El Ni ñ o of at least moderate strength was 12 storms in 1951. The warm water didn't totally win out over El Ni ñ o though. Most of the action this season formed in the MDR ( main development region ) and recurved to the subtropical Atlantic. The Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico stayed relatively quiet. There were only 3 storms active within the Caribbean Sea this year ( Bret , Franklin and Idalia ). There were a couple of others that scraped along the Leeward Islands ( Philippe and Ta...