it's been a while since there was anything worth talking about in the atlantic. we had a flash-in-the-pan depression near midmonth and that was all that came of the large persistent gyres in the western atlantic that were prevalent early in the month. i was having visions of the quick ends to the 2002 and 2006 seasons, where the action quit at the beginning of the month and that was that. here we are nearly at the end of october, and that something finally managed to fight its way through the plague of shear to develop.
td 16 is one of the healthier depressions you'll ever see. it has a large quantity of deep convection, decent banding in the exposed quadrants, and a fair anticyclonic arc in spite of some shear. it looks to have a 2-3 day run of slow strengthening ahead of it if it doesn't decide to travel by land. hopefully there won't be a mass casualty event that one of these major rainmakers can cause in haiti, land of deforested hillslopes and abject poverty. tough to say whether the oncoming trough will recurve the system. gfs is trying to slide the system further north or develop a reflection further north that gets yanked out past the canadian maritimes at the end of the week. some of the other globals keep it further south, and either set it adrift in the western caribbean or whip it around in an anticyclonic loop.
i think it'll probably stay a little further south and do the middle looping option, maybe get left by the trough advancing late in the week and either splay out and die under shear, or just hold down and fester some more. think it might become a hurricane for a day or two at some point, then weaken, by land or by shear.
one other thing of interest, that could affect how everything goes--watch the little brewing area near panama on the itcz. there's a weak low trying to form there--if it doesn't get inflow-starved it might start to play into the forecast as well.
HF 1728z28october