yeah i'm not a fan of highs, they bring calm conditions. where a low will produce wind regardless.
la nina does increase the chance of cyclones though.
for a cyclone to form they need sea temps over 26.5 deg to feed thundestorms, a SE trade to the south and a NW wind to the north to spin them up and a high in the mid levels to prevent excessive sheer. the first 2 items are more common during la nina years.
the other thing with cyclones is the bigger they are the more inclined they are to travel south towards the poles.
but yes you're right. they can kill themselves off if they sit in one place for too long due to sea surface temp dropping (upwelling).
the other thing interesting is that the MJO is used as a guide to when cyclones are most likely to form in the coral sea.
i used to think that cyclones are usually followed by no wind but these days i'm not so sure that's the case. i guess it depends on how much potential energy is left and whether the trades kick back in or not.
It's an interesting discusssion.
I knew clonics needed warm waterm and read some of the links you posted earlier this year about shear etc, but didn't know about the NW needed to spin them up. Makes sense though.
Tangential question............are you as bored as me today ??
Great topic, I feel like an addicted gambler who is sure he knows the rules of the game but given even the smallest amount of scientific information my theories collapse immediately. Because Tasmania is so small driving 50 to 100 km in any direction gives radically different results for seabreezes and frontal conditions.
The idea that any event has a probability of happening I can understand, but a weather event is the combined result of many other events so a combination of several probabilities....arggg...now my brain hurts.
hi Ken,
not bored yet. got a little bit done today but yes it's bee nslow.
hi Al,
that's the bit i struggle with also. the combination of things, does my head in too. i wish it were black and white but it's not. what i''ve been reading is more about increased or decreased likelyhoods of a season rather than shortrange forecasts. so its not much help seeing what will happen on the weekend. it's interesting that the the majotiry of recent climate study seems to be about the combinations of these major cycles so more is being understood and published online. (for me to read 
)
today i stumbled across research the csiro is doing that looks at the links between the SAM and water temps off the WA coast as well as the influence ENSO has.
in my thinking it should have a direct influence on the WA seabreezes. but i could be wrong. i'll post it later tonight.
The other thing I remember reading about a few years ago was the circumpolar current which supposedly promoted the formation of either highs or lows down south depending on what it was doing. I can't remember whether is was direction or speed of rotation, or summat like thart !
I just did some research to remind me about that.
The current moves in a clockwise direction, moving a phenomenal amount of water at a rate of 4 kts. One article said it's like watching the whole volume of Sydney Harbour flow past in 3 secs. It was part of the reason for the Bounty mutiny.
Apparently it has warm and cool patches, and I think it's how they are arranged that promotes either lows or highs. One article said it's though to be more important than El Nino in determining rainfall in southern Oz.
Worth doing some reading about.
panda - positive and negative.
ken, wow, that's a pandoras box you opened there. the circumpolar current is a big deal.
and i'm holding off on the WA stuff as i can't be sure of what i think.
so i started looking at bom records to see if generally in a particular spot the wind was stronger or weaker over a period of time and whether that corelated with seasonal anomalies.
and for the record. WA is on the way out!
that's right. i looked at qld, tasmania, south australia and south west parts of WA and everywhere but WA has seen a trend to above average winds in the last 30 years.
i plotted the average monthly wind over a 50-60 year period then overlayed the average monthly wind for the current 30 year period.
everywhere saw a monthly increase of 5-10km/hr especially robe in SA. all but WA, which has reduced. and i tried a couple of place in WA. 
not to get all political but SW WA is meant to be an indicator to climate change.
