In addition to the cyclone phase diagrams and overall appearance on IR, scats have shown a pretty good tendency for the strongest surface winds to coalesce about the center. I think so far the missing ingredient to push this over into a Jerry-esque tropical storm continues to be convection, not that it is not present, just that it is not present in sufficient depth and quantity, likely owing to the relatively cool SSTs. Still, at the very least, all of the other factors rather strongly argue for a real-time or post-season upgrade, imho. 40-45 knot STS works for me. Would be wild to get a good 6-12 hour burst of deep convection in the center before the clock runs out. From the look of where the wet bulb temps around 500mb are probably running, this doesn't strike me as impossible, however unusual. Ship report a long and lat or two from the coc logged 998mb at 0600UTC, and NRL currently lists the storm as having a minimum central pressure of 995mb. Overall, more and more 95 is getting a fuller Jerry look & feel to it. Seems like a strong contender for Noel to me.

91L post-eclipse looks dog-gone good. My mut is ready to give it two woofs up, even if SSD isn't. If Chirpa were a betting dog, and he is, he might easily put up a few milkbones for 95 & 91 this morning to get bumped to 15 & 16. Speaking of SSD, here's the latest:

DATE/TIME LAT LON CLASSIFICATION STORM
07/0645 UTC 20.9N 66.1W T1.0/1.0 93L -- Atlantic Ocean
07/0645 UTC 15.3N 52.7W T1.5/1.5 91L -- Atlantic Ocean
07/0600 UTC 48.8N 21.7W ST2.5/2.5 95L -- Atlantic Ocean

Not too shabby. And what 94L lacks in convection it certainly is making up in creating a broad area of substantially lower pressure, a very broad surface circulation, and strangely-positioned convective clusters. I'm not sure how one gets a Dvorak read out of that soup, but it could get more than a bit interesting should it come to a boil.