If you look at a couple of recently active years you find that you don't have to have a bunch of 'early' storms to make it an active year. In 2004, we were only to TS Earl at this point in the season. Yes, Charley had been a bad storm already making landfall on Aug 14, but it hadn't been a very active season to that point. Now in 2005 (which was among the most active EVER) we WERE already to Irene in this part of August. So an argument could be made that we are behind that curve. Certainly there is a LOT of season left to go and the most active times are still ahead of us....HOWEVER, it is also true that the farther we go along without getting some systems lined up in the Atlantic, the harder it will be to meet those very high predictions. I must also note that Ed was one of the few with predictions on the low side of those given by the 'experts' and he is looking pretty good so far.