Today was a pretty enjoyable day watching radars, sats, etc. around the web. Cool thing was that the internet wasn't as jammed and slow as it usually is when a storm is threatening. I was digging the Morehead City radar all day. All indications was that the storm was pretty strong by all eye witness accounts.

Banner day for the Accupro people. Bastardi was all over the storm today. You know he was raging like 3 pots of coffee. He gave maybe 5 updates from 2:20am through tonight. The last post, or requiem I guess, on the storm referenced some letters on Hatteras Realty's site. You can find it HERE. If you read the 3:15pm report, you'll see they say it's worse in Cape Hatteras than it was for Isabel. That's a bit of a surprise. The 1944 storm is the reference for that area. Wow. He also mentioned that he spoke with Mark Suddeth of the Hurricane Intercept Research team (videos usually available at hurricanetrack.com) and Mark reported 90 minutes of winds at 70mph or higher (including several 80+ and 2 > 100mph gusts). Finally, he cautions that Alex (like Claudette in Texas last year vs. Lili in '02) demonstrated the difference between an eye tightening at landfall and how the intensity really cranks.

So even though it was an Island hit, the "A" storm chalks up a Cat 2 shot on the USA. We've got many, many more to go. It will be interesting to see what the final rainfall totals were for the storm once NOAA has them published. There have got to be several areas of 6-9"+ over the 2-day period.

As for the next players on the playing field, who knows? 92L is pretty far out there. I predicted yesterday that it and 91L were candidates for the ocean. 91L is farther south than I thought it would be, but I don't see how it can continue west for that much longer. We've had our 3rd cold front since July make its way through, and there's supposed to be a really deep cold high for the NE and Mid-Atlantic later this week (potential severe weather event from what I can tell). I have no idea what either will do, but I will say this. I looked at a visible of Africa today and there were 3 systems on the continent and one approaching the east that all appear to be players. It's a burst of some of the strongest waves I've seen in a few years (with the exception of that occasional system that appears to already be a TS only haflway across Africa. Good shot that my peeps in P.R. might see some effects from 91L toward the end of the week. For now, all I can do is hope it's nothing serious and just sets the table for a good tropical wave drink, surf and smoke fest. Party on Island dudes!

Steve

P.S. - Sorry about any grammar or misspellings. It's Wild Turkey 101 night (over ice with a splash of tap water). Yeah baby. A toast to Alex and hopefully no loss of life.