Finally back after week's absence...guess I didn't miss too much.

Still catching up on everything but I wouldn't get excited about the GOM disturbance. Convection is still being enhanced by shear aloft...sort of the same non-tropical situation as with the GOM low we tracked a few weeks ago. With this one, steering flow suggests a more westward track, but again, just some ULL-enhanced convection. Nothing that poses a threat to develop into a TC.

Over the past week, we've seen stronger tropical waves traverse the Mean Development Region. The apparent boom in tropical wave activity is in part due to the negative MJO pulse moving over the area...later this month a positive MJO will take over and we'll probably see things die down a bit. The next negative MJO, if timing is right, should come around the second half of August...PERFECT timing for everything to break loose. I still think there's a decent chance of Alex forming later this month in the Mean Development Region just before the negative MJO exits...GFS still picks up on lows east of the Windward Islands in the long-range, we'll see if continues to for many runs to come, persistence of course is the big key.

Also want to mention that a real dull start does NOT correlate to a duller season. Some hyperactive seasons (with NTC above 150%) where the first named storm didn't form until sometime after July 15 include 1950, 1955, 1961, 1969, and 1998. Most of those years really didn't take off until the end of August...again, we're talking about big dawg years here. What happens in the first 2 (or even 2.5) months has no relationship with what happens around the peak or later in the season.