Rgv20 wrote:IMO if 96L develops close to the NW Yucatan than odd are it would take the NE option as suggested by the 12zECMWF and 0zCMC but if it were to develop more south than a more WNW heading would be likely like the GFS and NAM are forecasting.
Based entirely on anecdotal evidence (e.g. remembering past tropical cyclones in the area), I agree with your assessment. I don't recall many (if any) instances of a tropical cyclone in the BoC (at a latitude south of the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico) that ended up moving northeastward and making landfall in the eastern or northeastern GoM. Now, I'm sure it has happened before, but it seems like the vast majority of the time, tropical cyclones in the BoC end up heading westward into Mexico, with some isolated instances of storms heading northwestward and making landfall in extreme southern Texas. The 00z GFS and 00z HWRF develop a cyclone in the BoC and, eventually, move it westward into Mexico. The 00z CMC (which tends to spin up way too many lows into raging cyclones it seems) is farther north, and ends up taking 96L into the northern GoM. Interestingly, the 12z ECMWF (haven't seen the 00z yet) develops 96L at a relatively low latitude in the BoC, yet still ends up moving it northward and making landfall in the northern GoM.
So, the end result is that the forecast is very uncertain. This shouldn't be surprising, though, since we don't even have a tropical cyclone yet. The variability amongst the ensemble members (SREF, GFS global ensembles, etc.) is very large, although none that I've seen yet indicate that Texas is a candidate for seeing much rainfall from whatever is to become of 96L.
EDIT:
Based on THIS PLOT, my observation above is relatively accurate -- for cyclones that are essentially south of the northern tip of the Yucatan, there is a <50% probability of a U.S. landfall based on historical data. The probability rapid increases for those cyclones that occur at and north of the latitude of the tip of the Yucatan. Just FYI. Note also that storms in TD14's current location have had a ~30% of hitting the U.S., but that's for another thread.
![[img]http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4973/slp19.png[ /img]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/716/slp19.png/){kind=link}
