Accuweather Meteorologist Explains What Makes This Year's Typhoon Season Different

now Jason you mentioned the typhoon that hit the Tokyo area a few weeks ago what can you say about typhoon season so to speak are we at the height of it right now and how is the activity this year comparing to Prior years uh yeah we're in the peak part of the hurricane or typhoon season I should say in the West Pacific It generally runs uh from June to through September October time period uh right now we were below average through July I think we've gotten a little bit more active here in August we're still uh we're probably closing in on normal but a lot of the systems have been on the weaker side um especially well in it the exception being Shan Shan here um did get to a major hurricanes uh equivalent um still no super typhoons though in the West Pacific which is a little unusual um for as compared to normal what is a super typhoon uh wind sustained winds over 140 miles per hour and how many super typhoons do we typically see in a year uh generally about maybe I think the average is around four and we should have had at least one by now and the closest we've gotten is uh I think we've had a couple get to category four wow normally way more than what we've seen this year what what's the cause for this difference a lot of it has to do with some um ocean water temperatures of some cooler than normal ocean water temperatures in the Central Pacific also some cooler Waters in the uh uh Northwest Pacific uh as well which is kind of shift at the main Development Area instead of being uh maybe more towards Guam in that area it's been pushed a little bit more Westward so it's been more favored a lot of the development has been favored more towards the Philippine Sea uh and a little bit farther north as well um we've seen a lot of the development probably north of north of the Philippines and and to the and to the west of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands so that's that's a change from what we saw last year Guam got hit a few times last year they've yet that be been hit by a tropical system at this point so far this year and I don't know if that's going to change uh looking at the ocean temperatures I was just about to ask about those ocean temperatures because we hear so often at least on the East Coast about warming ocean temperatures how rare is it within the context of the last five six seven years for ocean water to get cooler uh we had that with linia last uh last well not last year the uh previous few years there was a lot of cooling in the Central and Eastern Pacific because of the wind flow leaving leading to cooler ocean water temperatures due to upwelling um that's kind of re that reverse last year and we had some warming with alino and now we're kind of trying to transition to linia uh again that's resulted in some cooling across the central equ the Central and Eastern equatorial Pacific but we still have a lot of warm water farther west and I think that's part of the reason why we've seen a lot of development a little bit closer to um Eastern Asia uh leading to a little bit more impacts because a lot of the really warm waters are Philippine Sea South China Sea East China Sea uh so off of Eastern off of Eastern China off of the Philippines uh and off of uh Japan