For awhile, the seasonal warming of the Gulf of Mexico didn’t keep pace with the warming of 2005 (at the same time of year). That appears to have changed. It’s no real surprise, with temperatures near the Coast approaching 100 degrees in places and record highs being set on an almost-daily basis (the old records mostly having been set last year or over the past decade).

June 21, 2005:	June 21, 2006:

Different regions are warming, definitely… and in fact, I’d recommend a comparison of June 2005 and June 2006. At this point last year, the Gulf was in a brief cooling trend. This year, it is in what can only be described as explosive warming.
June 2005 June 2006

(In other, completely, wholly unrelated news, yet another scientific study backs up the idea of human-induced explosive global warming.)

BTW, minor props to me for calling Alberto. Didn’t quite make hurricane status, nor do I expect it to be upgraded retroactively at the end of the season, but not too bad. At the end of the season, I’ll look over my various predictions and see how accurate they were overall.