Stan II?

The big-picture tropical weather situation has rarely been so interesting. Over, the weekend, a large subtropical low has been centered over the Gulf of Mexico, with various tropical storms and wannabe tropical storms circling about its far-flung periphery: on the SW side of the big low, the usual wind flow reversed, and El Salvador and Nicaragua got hammered with rains from the Pacific; on the NE side of the big low, showers developed north of the Bahamas and started moving towards the Carolinas; on the SE side of the big low, a tropical depression developed east of Cuba, and on the west side of the big low, Tropical Storm Stan menaced the Mexican Bay of Campeche coastline. It's rare that you see a large cutoff low at these latitudes that isn't associated with a tropical storm of some sort, and so it wasn't so surprising that Tropical Storm Stan developed, given the ample opportunities.

The future is worrisome, however. As the week advances, the Bahaman showers may form into a tropical depression and start advancing northward in a disorganized way up the east Florida coastline, into the Carolinas, reemerge over the Atlantic, and eventually strengthen into a tropical storm. I'm more worried about what will happen in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, though. After Tropical Storm Stan rains out in southern Mexico, a new storm will develop in about the same place (Stan II?), and it will be placed in a perfect position to cross the Gulf of Mexico, and hit the Tampa, Florida area from the west. The possible future scenario is well past the six-day model run length (more like two weeks: Oct. 12th-13th), however, so it need not happen, but it's something to watch out for.

Hurricane Otis is weakening, and the rains from it are still forecast to hit AZ (Tuesday evening?)