Why am I not surprised the New York Times is pimping global warming...

(sigh)

Anyway, JB this am:

"With this pattern, everything has been pushed southwestward as far as tropical development. It's hard for me to believe that a storm won't come out of the western Caribbean and/or Gulf in this pattern. The system that is near 72 west now will be in the southern Gulf next week, and with the big high to the north, it will either be forced to wait there or be driven into Mexico. But the European 500 mb pattern certainly looks like it's ripe along with the surface map as the big high raises pressures over the Carolinas and the upper flow over the area in question becomes southeast from the western Caribbean to the western Gulf. It looks like the pattern that set off all the activity near Florida, except displaced southwest. In other words, that is where the action looks like it should go too. Again, I would be surprised if we simply left the playing field without another threat to our coast. The most interesting aspect of all this is the idea that, given the timeline, such an event would take enough time to evolve to wait until the amplification cranked in the pattern, again another similarity to Opal which sat down there for several days before the pattern amplified and took it like a rocket out of there."

Nothing imminent, but a bear watch may be needed in the future.