Upper lows often do have moisture in association with them; there is nothing in their definition that says that they must be dry features. In fact, the cold air aloft found with these features often helps to trigger convection due to steepened lapse rates (how temperature changes with height) from the surface to mid & upper levels. They can occasionally spin-up surface reflections that can develop, but that is a slow process and there are no signs of this occurring. Further, it often occurs in conjunction with either slow-moving upper-lows and/or those interacting with a tropical wave/pre-existing surface boundary, neither of which are occurring here.

NONAME -- there is no indication that the feature off of the Carolina coast is similar to Alex. The NHC is no longer really looking at this as a candidate for development.

Aside: it looks like there's some interesting interaction going on between the upper-low and TD 9 this evening. The overall feature is still to the north, but a weak impulse has moved down to just north of the depression, helping to keep the storm from moving any more to the north. It is likely helping to enhance the convection on the east side of the storm -- but also keep it on the east side of the storm. It'll have a respite tomorrow as this feature moves away, but there's another impulse due east of Harvey near 48 W that will dive down around the periphery of the larger feature and impact the depression towards Monday. Better conditions lie ahead in terms of both shear and water temperatures, but there's also a good bit of dry air out there as well.