yep.. irene has just about quit moving. having its outflow shield squashed and the surface sheared may decouple the mlc and start the system drifting west as a... well, weakling. i don't expect it to come over to north carolina regardless, but hey, the details of this one have consistently thrown me.
get to start fresh with the 96L disturbance. all of that early modeling bringing it nw is probably right, because there's one hell of a deep trough dug in behind irene and the ridge blocking irene. there will be some southwesterly shear with it, too.. once the system gets a little further to the north. i'd expect 96L to slowly deepen, and slowly move nw for the next few days... the ridge will fill back and send it hurtling west by the middle of next week. not unlikely to be jose, but not likely to do much for a few days.
waves coming off africa are more robust but packed close together.... out of phase perhaps. this should keep them jumbled up and slow to develop if one has such intentions.
favorable mjo is coming on, but it's not progressing cleanly or quickly. soi keeps dipping negative and while that persists the backing and confused upper pattern in the atlantic should be slow to give way. it may not go strongly positive.. if it does look for the strong zonal ridge to become established in the atlantic again.
i've got a theory that action is much more intense and dangerous on the tail end of an mjo wave... the soi response favors a strong subtropical ridge in the atlantic at that point.. and the favorable span has been active long enough to typically have perked up several waves. this one is just coming on, so by that measure things aren't really going just yet.. but say around august 20th through the end of the month.. well, we'll see.
random thing to watch... low is diving sw with the digging trough in the central atlantic. whatever happens to peel away from the trough and get under the ridge.. if anything, might be of interest. some models still showing falling pressures in the west carib/gulf by late week. not a definite but if anything happens to get over there...
HF 0601z13august