18z run looks very docile and dull compared to the last 3 days. something in gfs encoded mind must have remembered "oh, its july". vigorous waves are still present in the basin, only now there isn't much model hoopla over them. former 95L is progessing, now near 43w. it should be near 50w early saturday and from there on comes its real chance at development. gfs has a slightly more active TUTT than recent runs, though still probably not enough to preclude development. it's best chances are prior to the islands, july 10-11. the wave gfs was most enthusiastic about, near 30w, is trailing far to the south just as indicated. it has plenty of convection going for it, though not a great deal of organization. it may look better over time, but would likely be a couple days from depression stage. another wave should come off tomorrow or saturday and behave in the spirit of its immediate predecessors.
the northwest atlantic also has that interesting (though underachieving) feature 96L. it lacks the steady convection of a true depression, but may have some of the cyclonic structure. mediocre chances as it moves northeastward (fair environment, decent ssts, short time slot, other competing convection). this was an mcc core that was trailing the feature to its ne that was of interest a couple days ago.. may have a similar open-ended life cycle and never develop.
i'm feeling less confident about getting a storm or two out of the current activity.. but will be surprised if nothing gets going during the next few days.
by the way, potential season-wide implications as the strongly negative soi of june has caused much more extensive positive sst anomalies in the pacific from 150w to west of the dateline. a may-like positive soi rebound could trip this trend up, but if it doesn't we may be leaning to weak warm enso in august.
HF 0218z09july