Joe B is weighing in on a southerly track into the Gulf. He's on vacation today but dropped in a post. He said that any weather off the east coast (NC to Coastal New England) could be ugly, but the sources of that weather would be the big high to the north, trofy weather currently off the South Atlantic Coast, and at most a bit of the energy from 97L. So he's moving his area of concern back to the Gulf and NW Caribbean. The way he put it, is that the high (behind the coming cold front I'm assuming) will turn the winds west of New Orleans to Northeast, while they will stay Southeast further east, leaving a natural alleyway over the central gulf for something to track into. This is mostly derived from the pattern itself, so we'll have to see what comes up. With a big cold high (cold for July anyway) in place, you always need to look south of that for potential development.

He's looking at this from 4 different angles - the tendancy for the Artic Oscillation to create blocking (though neutral right now); a negative NAO pushing highs further south (currently positive, moving toward neutral) and allowing the SW Atlantic Ridge to fire instead of trofs despite the backing of the longwaves over time; the western Atlantic Ridge as a dominate feature; and what kind of western component forcing due to the negative SOI as the warm water in the Central Pacific is starting to take hold.

Steve