i guess that gale center means business. it has quite an impressive structure on satellite--surprisingly rounded, and not very extratropical-looking. it has two cycles of ssd classifications as a subtropical storm... usually a stack of those will get something named. not nearly enough convection on it to start talking about it becoming a tropical storm, but it's starting to drift into the domain of subtropical status. most of the globals show it persisting at or near current strength through monday, which would definitely give it a window to get there. generic solution from a blend of globals is it hanging out there as a 1004-1010 mb low and completing a sort of hairpin or loop to the north, then diving wsw... all well out in the open atlantic. there is some high-level westerly shear (but not deep enough convection to get it shredded... maybe similar to those late 2005 systems that wandered out there with flatter vertical structure than classic deep-tropic systems), and eventually that will rip this little feature up as a deep layer trough plows into the western atlantic. that is the same trough that will be associated with the coldest air of the season driving into the southeast (looking for 15-20 here; you floridians may be in for a citrus-unfriendly sort of week).
an interesting sort of aside is that some sort of december tropical activity has occurred more often than not this decade. if we have a pablo pop up in the next (or somehow an arthur?), that will pad those peculiar numbers even more.
HF 1705z29december