"The Gulf looks dirty this morning, and a setup for a drenching coastal rain for Texas and Louisiana is there, and with it comes the chance for tropical development. The type of development it would be is more along the lines of an Allison or Frances (1998 version), a system that concentrates its energy so that big wind and rain problems would occur only near and northeast of the center. The tropical wave is now in the southern Gulf. The idea is its energy feeds northward toward the Texas coastal bend over the next several days. This develops low pressure near or just east of the South Texas coast by Wednesday night, which then drifts slowly northward or northeastward. The tightening gradient between the low and the big high to the northeast sends a large area of 20- to 35-knot east to southeast winds through the northern Gulf, which tighten up and focus over the northwest Gulf Thursday and Friday.

Even without such development, this is a nasty-looking rain threat. The development would just tack a name onto it, and chances are that we could be going toward one of those arguments (as with Allison) that still persists as to what it is. However, the practical weather aspect right now is that there is a flood threat later in the week for southeast Texas and Louisiana. The flood threat earlier is out on the southern High Plains. There is probably going to be an area where there is not nearly as much rain.

The Canadian and UKMET and GFS are all lined up with northwestern Gulf development and the one needs a calculator for Canadian rain amounts. Suffice it to say this has been talked about here for awhile. Right now, I see no need to change the idea on the threat as far as the heavy rain goes. Whether or not there is a fight on Friday as to if it is named, my feeling now is there is a good chance that at least tropical-storm force winds are in the northwest Gulf out of this Thursday night or Friday. But as we saw with Allison, we don't need a deep storm to do the dirty work as the lowest pressure at first landfall was only 1003 mb."

Hey Keith, you got your lat/lon backwards! Unless that is, you live in Greenland part time