It's not been a brilliant storm season so far, although it got off to a decent start in October. I've seen four at or near home, the last one a month ago, none particularly intense or memorable. Today's was the first in a month. I did see a storm at Kurrajong 18 days ago on a 'mini storm chase' about 10 km beyond the Storm Shield*.

Anyway, here's a distant picture of a retreating storm, probably the one over Broken Bay, at about 3:30PM today:



*It more or less follows the opposite bank of the Nepean and Hawkesbury rivers

Classic La Niña = crap storm season.

Rubbish, crap storm seasons are norm now regardless of ENSO.

Been a pretty active season so far. and spread over 5-6 states (some of which get hardly anything anyway), 2 significant events plus an ECL during the most unlikely time of year, but ofcorse people always find something negative to write about. Not to mention the La nina and the season are young

The storm season so far hasn't been too bad here in the Illawarra, considering we often do worse than Sydney.

I certainly would not call the low that we've just had an ECL. It was more a few weak lows along a trough line.

Certainly out here, the last 2 months have been quite active.

The Sydney storm shield is working too well lately.

Sydney's forecast has been upgraded to 32C today. Seems possible given the very weak sea breeze expected for today.

I agree, as a person that chases everything available on weekends and after 5pm on work days.

This season is better than last 3, but pales compared to 30 years ago when I started doing chasing.

Nostalgia or actual fact/data?

I would say La Nina's are better than El Nino's for storm seasons. Yes it's true that they are pretty much crap regardless of ENSO but at least with La Nina you don't have constant problems with moisture as you do with El Nino.

Re storm seasons, I had 21 storm days at or near home in 2016/17, which is probably close to average. It started well but there was a bit of a donut hole in January.

As I recall, 2015/16 wasn't too bad. In December 2014, we had a very stormy period in early December, with storms on nearly each of the first 12 days, some severe. That was memorable.

The cool Summer of 2011/12 (la Nina) was OK for storms.

The data I've seen previously trends to show Neutral / weak El Nino's are better for strong/severe storms due to colder uppers & better shear profiles - La Nina's = too much moisture, saturated atmosphere, better for rain events or sloppy wet storms.

Recent events are more because of +SAM and very mobile, slow moving upper cold pools. Maybe this part of the world SAM is more a driver for Spring / Autumn events. Be an interesting research / study.

Yeah Steve I was almost going to bring the December 2014 storm event up yesterday. That was very memorable indeed, we got more than 10 storms in 8 days I think.

Yes Kino that would probably make sense. I think this La Nina could be okay though because the IOD is positive so everything is not saturated. I actually have a good feeling about this summer for storms. Early signs have been good like having a few upper lows already and pretty good moisture at the surface.

I reckon +SAM would be better for storms but -SAM would push cold fronts further north so that would bring the prospect of squall line type setups which would be cool.

2014 was an El Nino so that fits what I've previously seen perfectly.

IoD has no effect on summer patterns -

Oct-Dec 2004 was during a neutral phase and NSW had no shear whatsoever. The basin was so humid, but the moisture only stayed on the surface, nothing above about 1km up. Storms fired up in the far west regularly but never moved east and they were mostly high based. SImilar thing happened in 2006, latter part of summer into autumn - that was also neutral going into a weak el nino.

ENSO doesn't dictate the seasons, or at least not as much as other factors do.

Sorry, it was an El Niño. And ENSO impacts summer than early spring, a point emphasised all the time by the BoM in their climate outlooks. December 2014 was well into El Niño.

And the conditions you describe are atypical El Niño....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014–16_El_Niño_event

LRH has written 2004 in his post.