Everyone is spanking off to the number of storms, and that is impressive...but that is a small part of the story. I am not impressed at all when once uses ACE given the number of storms. It's barely above climo! In fact, the WPAC is quiet too and as far as northern hemi ACE goes, it is significantly below normal. There has definitely been shear, dry air...whatever over the MDR into the eastern CARB and that has hurt the quality of storms. We are almost done with the African easterly wave stuff now too.