I had some thoughts on XTD2 when I first looked at it this morning. It reminded me a bit of 90L which I think was the wave that slowed down, split, helped spawn the rogue storm off the east coast and then continued on across the southern Gulf into Mexico. The difference was that the trof split was already in front of this particular system instead of meeting it halfway. Hostile conditions await, but if it can bust that trof split, the southern axis of the wave may well get a chance to crank near where >I< have it progged in Hank Frank's contest. What we're seeing today appears to be divergence based on the wave interacting with the eastern boundary of the trof. We're also seeing the wave split with some of the energy heading off NW while the southern energy progresses westward (albeit at its slowest rate so far). I think the Eastern Gulf may have to watch this one, and I'm sure all you guys down there will keep your eyes on it for the next several days.

Went and read Bastardi to get his comments while composing this post. He offered a couple of interesting ideas concerning implications for Alex and Europe (based on warm water - heh, where have we heard that before???). He also thinks that if anything is in the NW Caribbean by Sunday, it's going to have to be watched. Doesn't like GFS's SE FL scenario, notes ECMWF is farther west and UKMET allows for even a more westerly drift. Basically with all the amplitude in the westerlies, the map should be ripe to conjur up some action. We'll see.

Steve