Interesting discourse there guys, and I agree. What I don't agree with is Dr. Gray's revised forecast nor NOAA's revisions which came out immediately following Gray's as if somehow his reduction in the number of storms demanded a similar response from the NOAA. If indeed the season's activity is already 1/3 or 3/7 complete, it's going to be "mostly" a pretty boring storm season. 9 named storms? 7-10 named storms? How can this be? Oh yeah - it's the MODERATE EL NINO! Well I don't see it. I check out the SST anomolies every day, and to my untrained eye, there's hardly a menacing El Nino out there to stunt the growth of or shear storms this year.

Anyway it's apparent to me that we're going to have some excitement on this side of the Atlantic no matter how many storms eventually become classified. I'm glad Ed mentioned 10/46, because the first site I went to after I checked on some Saints news, was the Goes 8. There is a tiny bit of convection near 10-50 (wave extending north of 20) which looks quite a bit like the blow-up we saw yesterday north of PR did a few days ago.

This is what I can see on the WV and IR this morning: There is convection @ 21/80 just east of the nose end of the trof south of Cuba which appears to be a tropical wave sandwiched between an ULL centered over Haiti to the east and a splitting trof to the NW. There also appears to be mid-level circulation around 78/24 (northern and central Bahamas) being aided by some upper divergence which seems to be some energy left over from the front and/or Christobal. That environment looks fairly hostile and confused right now, but most of the tropical energy seems to be in a box between 15, 25, 75 and 85. It's anyone's guess as to whether conditions become more favorable in the next 2-4 days down there, but that's where the energy is right now. And if something was to form in our hemisphere in the near-term, it's going to be from some of this energy. Things should be apparent (one way or the other) by Sunday.

Steve