Actually, Steve, it is interesting you mention Philippe... I was watching the satellite presentations this morning and I was thinking the same thing! That the U/A low guilty of imparted shear over the system was "kind of like" doing a weak version of Gracie's interaction with a extra-tropical features in the NW Atlantic Basin (October 1991). The resulting hybrid system was the one of notoriety (book deals and movie pap) but the more interesting part for me is what took place in the latter stages. The event took on warm core characteristics in the end game, and converted to a more purely tropical system all over again. In all, it was as though Gracie (not sure I'm spelling her name right by the way) first sacrificed herself as a potent potential energy injector and thus resulted hybrid bomb, but when the system looped back over the Gulf Stream, the additional latent heat flux and convective bursting contracted the core and abandoned the wind field in the outer reaches.. Amazing, it was like hurricane goes to hybrid cold core and back to hurricane... If nothing else, that whole week's worth of events certainly challenges the usefulness of putting boundaries on the tropical vs subtropical vs extra-tropical systems; the paradox being that a purely cold core and warm core systems are indeed entirely unique comparatively! But, sparring the digression...

Phillipe or what is left of him I suspect is history and a newer paradigm will have to be dealt with from here on out.. Whether that will mean a system to contend with or merely monitor as it races to the graveyard of the NE Atlantic Basin - I haven't even approached those possibilities given fantastic Rita.

As far as you insinuation and relay over Dr. Gray... On thing I find interesting if not peculiar about this season's tropical fare is that we haven't really seen rapid deepeners from just off the African Coast.. Many of these waves certainly have been contributors, perhaps primarily so, once they made it to about 55W - more like 60+ however - but as far as having a strong tropical cyclone between African and the Leewards, that area of the ocean still has tremendous heat potential do to lack of processing...Errrr, that is, I tink toe... I may be wrong about that....but it seems to me that absence of significant activity is stowed energy in the sst. It's a bit of a mystery to me as well because the Azores high ridge has been dominant most of the summer, which in conventional wisdom means there are ample deep layer easterlies and lower shear stresses on westward moving impulses underneath...
Fascinating...