The ability to predict severe weather has great societal value. It is well known that individual tornado outbreaks are predictable only several hours in advance. However, it may be possible to predict the seasonal changes in the environmental conditions that support tornado outbreaks. Essentially, we ask “can we predict changes in the likelihood of tornedo outbreak?” Here we use the NCAR Community Climate System Model version 4.0 (CCSM4) forecasts from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME), and observational estimates from North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) for the period 1982-2011. This study shows that the Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), as the background state that is a more favorable condition for high impact weather in the United States, is strongly correlated with sea surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico during the peak seasons of tornado outbreaks. In contrast, no contemporaneous relations are found with El Niño Southern Oscillation.