had a pretty atrocious tendency to overestimate what fay was capable of. fay was the ultimate 'huggy storm'. it just never could stop abusing itself with land interaction enough to go into a serious deepening phase. not that it's any consolation to all the folks who got flooded out by the storm. the tornado count may even end up around fifty on this one.
hopefully gustav won't be as much of a forecasting difficulty. it looked a little more straightforward yesterday before the center got stuck on the lower peninsula of haiti and stayed mostly disconnected from low-level inflow. that shouldn't stay as much a factor for a whole lot longer... it isn't hard to envision the official forecast for the storm finally starting to take shape. an organized storm making a long arcing run across the middle of the gulf over labor day weekend usually delivers a massive impact wherever it goes. we can only hope that something will prevent this, but it has the look of a classic case.
away further east is that developing 95L system northeast of the leewards. most of the global guidance wants to feed it northward through a ridge gap. the quicker it develops the more likely this will happen, and it does look to be developing. nhc will probably start issuing advisories over the next couple of cycles. a few of the models prefer to block it and shove it westward under the ridge poised to set up over the eastern u.s. for the next few days... looks less likely at this point.
more action coming across from further east... wave/low nearing 15/35 has a nice curved signature but very little convection. it does seem like the saharan air layer is doing it's job.. but of course these waves can just develop further west, which in the long run makes them less apt to recurve. another wave is coming off. for the next three weeks this ought to persist, until the atlantic begins to transition into a fall configuration.
HF 0132z28august