Thanks for the link Steve - indeed interesting - and an analog approach that I often use myself. Since it seems to be a popular theme (with good reason), I went back and captured a small piece of my first post on the Storm Forum which seems to support this line of thought and might be of interest to those who do not visit the other forums:
"The tropical jetstream which had extended from Central America to the Bahamas has become more zonal in its flow and has moved east and south to lower latitudes in the central tropical Atlantic. This all points to a rather quiet Cape Verde season and a much more active Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea and western Atlantic Season. It also increases the risk for a hurricane landfall along the Gulf and southeast U.S. coastlines. (original post 05/02/02)" Haven't seen anything yet which would alter my thinking on this, except that the weak El Nino has indeed returned and might reduce the total numbers to 11 - its just arriving too late to have too much of an impact on this season. If we get a June storm, I'll stick with 12, otherwise 11.
Cheers,
ED