Gaston's back -- the NHC put out a 7pm update to say that they will be issuing the next advisory on the storm, as opposed to the HPC, at 11pm. Their webpage now references Tropical Storm Gaston yet again, as opposed to Tropical Depression Gaston. I think the center is trying to reform a bit further north, nearest the strongest convection south of the D.C. area, and would not be surprised to see a minimal tropical storm for a day or two over the Atlantic.

Other topics of interest -- Hermine is basically shooting out from it's convection and well on it's way to being declassified. Don't think it has too much longer before it's done -- and I'm not even sure it'll make much of an extratropical system either.

Frances is the big topic, and one on which I'm going to ignore the FSU football posts here as they aren't relevant. If the storm goes through here, the game just gets moved to later in the season...and no, the model here has no "football coefficient." In any case, the storm is going through a minor period of flux while the new, larger eye gets itself together. Later tonight or tomorrow morning, I expect we'll see a storm looking a lot like Isabel did last year with a large eye (last recon reported a 45mi eye), albeit at a weaker intensity. For now though, it has been obscured.

The upper low to it's west is retrograding to the west and I expect it to either dissipate or, at the least, not have a major influence on the storm; right now, the ridge is building in around it. The trough to the west may be held up just a bit by Gaston, assuming it lingers around a bit. It will pick up Frances at some point -- but when is the big key. Frances still could miss the coast entirely, but that possibility is growing slimmer by the hour. The GFDL keeps trending west, the AVN is still pretty far south, and the UKMET takes the storm in over Miami and then up Apalachee Bay -- not a good scenario. Coupled with the FSU Superensemble model I referenced before and talks with some people here, I feel like Florida is very much under the gun from this one. Everyone up and down the coast needs to be wary, but those in Florida - east, west, and Gulf coasts - need to pay close attention. Model consensus right now says Cape Canveral and the Superensemble says north Miami. Intensity? Most models are near the cat3/4 level in 5 days, with a peak just before then. In other words, this could be the first year since 1916 - and first unambiguous year since before 1900 - with two U.S. landfall cat. 4+ storms.

In other words -- stay tuned.

The invest off of Africa is decently organized, but it's pretty far to the north and I think the mid and low-level circulations may well be separated by a few degrees of latitude -- that or the thing shooting west ahead of the main convection is a figment of my imagination. It's got developmental potential, but is most likely one for the fish and not something that will develop rapidly (if much at all). If it doesn't do it soon, it'll meet it's demise in the westerlies near 20°N. The wave just off of Africa has more potential to be a long-tracker; the GFS particularly likes it, while other models pick up on something out there. We are near the peak of the season, so anything's possible.