CaneTracker -- thing is, for everyone he gets right, you can pinpoint another (Dennis, taking it to New Orleans practically up until landfall) that he got wrong. I'm not trying to incite another AccuWeather war, but Bastardi's wrong about as often as he is right. He goes out there on a limb and nails a few before others...but gets burned in a similar fashion. One's personal preference, I guess. I'm personally not too keen on his style, but I do have to give him credit where it is due...like with the initial call on Franklin (as echoed by HF) -- I was too slow and bearish on it, while the bullish nature of the tropics won out this time.

Something you all may find interesting: Derek Ortt, the guy Steve mentioned in his previous post and a forecaster over at Storm2k, is only a recently-graduated undergrad at UMiami. He does pretty well for not having had a full background, which means he should do even better once he gets the tropical & overall meteorological background under him in the next year or two; his specialty right now is the model he and John Cangelosi run over at their site. I personally feel that they probably go a little far in recommending watches and warnings, but that again is just my personal preference...otherwise they do a pretty good job. Just an interesting tidbit.