maybe this is a bit of a presumptuous guess... but you know they're busy butting heads down in miami over whether this thing is alma or tropical depression 1A. as far as to whether it has the required organization... i mean, duh. guys, just write an advisory saying 'egads.... alma lives!', and be done with it. it's not any weaker than when the last one was written, and surely a good deal more organized. also, got more than a couple models saying that it's a viable system when it gets bay of campeche side, too.
it can't be helping that the mexican radars are down (surprise surprise) in the area... and of course nobody had the forethought to task recon for today, because why in the hell would the system keep moving nnw, and/or redevelop offshore? i mean, honestly, didn't we keep drawing the official track to stay on land? the NERVE.
no eyes down there, just an obvious low pressure with a bunch of banded deep convection around it. can't look and see if they're doing anything either, because that product only starts updating when atlantic hurricane season officially starts... tomorrow.
honestly, the nhc cracks me up sometimes. give them a brand new system and they'll pretty consistently name it when it starts looking like *coughcoughalmahm* does. give them a pacific system declared dead on the atlantic side, and you know they're having a big row over what it is. it's obviously alma because you can pretty continously track the low/rotary envelope and attribute it to pacific storm alma. calling it arthur is a big stretch when they do things like call a fragment of hurricane ivan 'ivan' again when it sweeps back into the gulf 4-5 days later. but you know somebody else is saying that the vorticity shifted and merged with offshore troughing induced by an atlantic wave, so it's obviously a new system... even though that wave was interacting with alma.
if it wasn't for doggone central america, making this so danged hard.
HF 1148z31may