Hi MichaelB,
I have animations of Satpics, MSLP, SSTs and selective radar of these events that are probably too big to upload here. In a nutshell though, La Nina created lifting air-masses in a persistent manner right along our East Coast longitudes. These are easily seen by the Satpic animations. This created a persistent low pressure region that drifted west, then east and so on, that when combined with the cold pools from the south over warm water, set off these ECLs in a sequence. It's the persistence of these features that is of great interest, since that is unrecorded in ECL history.
The highs look like the victims in this sequence as it was the low-pressure regions that dominated with highs flanking adjacent to this feature. They (the highs) are sitting 4 to 6 degrees further north this year but I think this is more a feature of the polar waves combined with cold-SST-pools in the Bight supporting their positioning.
I'm over-simplifying these events since animations do that in one's brain. It appeared obvious from the patterns of air-flow that this sequence of ECLs was inevitable. It also appears that the Earth's over-warming balancing act creates these persistent extremes. We might need to rewrite the texts that describe Hadley Cells and the like since there seems to be other mysterious factors at play.
Finally, a little discussion about the models, in particular GFS. Last year, GFS could hardly get a prediction in June/July correct 3 days out. This year, GFS nailed all ECL events pretty-well, sometimes 6 days out. So GFS modellers appear to understand a warming planet's behavior better! At least in the last 6 weeks or so:-)
Cheers,
Michael Scollay
