Caneman, Charles and Hank,

Actually, there ARE some climate cycles where Western Gulf cyclones do have significant West to East motion. It is an apparent shift of the Westerlies to a lower-than-typical latitude. Check out the Unisys or NHC track archives for the 1870's and you will find several "Texas to Florida" storms. Some are really W. Gulf of Mexico to FL panhandle or FL W. coast, and some are Bay of Campeche- to NW Gulf - to FL panhandle or West Coast. But they're there if you look. The 1870's may have been our busiest tropical storm decade in FL, although it was almost impossible to tell which storms were canes, and which weren't then. With this year's activity in the Gulf being a possible anamoly from long term average, and with potential changes to the familiar Islands-to-Bahamas-to Hatteras boomerang pattern, it will be interesting to see what the Gulf patterns will be over the next several years. Long range climatology seems to show that the FL West Coast may be overdue for Westerly storms, even though they have gotten Caribbean and Yucatan action off and on over the past few years.

Climate history buff