Model Tease for Gulf Tropical Storm

On Tuesday, a blip appeared on the Canadian forecast model in the Gulf of Mexico. It looked like it might just be our first tropical storm. AccuWeather.com Professional's Joe Bastardi said in his blog Tuesday:

Today, most forecast models show some sort of storm in the Gulf this weekend.

Here are the details of where we stand as of Friday morning.

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NOTES:

All maps shown below are at the farthest time extent of the model, or at landfall, whichever comes first.

I don't monitor the models all the time so I can't comment on how they have done in the past with similar situations, or even how they have trended this week. For in-depth discussion such as that, read the meteorologists' blogs on the Pro Site.

First and foremost, the models which track the center of the low pressure system only, and are specifically used for hurricane forecasting. The BAMM, BAMD, LBAR, and A98E have all swung eastward overnight (previous run shown in darker colors). They seem to be agreeing on pushing the tropical storm into the Gulf and then out over Florida:

The Canadian model (CMC, the model that first projected the storm) shows a strong area of low pressure with heavy precip off the coast of the Florida Panhandle on Sunday night:

The NAM (the preferred short-term model) is not believing the hype in yesterday's or last night's model run, moving a weak area of precipitation through the western Gulf into the Texas cost:

The NAM-WRF (NAM with a better initialization) has maintained a strong storm in the Western Gulf since yesterday, and it predicts a close approach to Mexico just south of Texas Monday evening:

The COAMPS (a short-range Navy model) shows a decent storm in the Gulf Sunday night:

We only get the JMA from Japan once a day, but yesterday's run shows no area of low pressure, but a circle of heavy rain in the craw of Florida on Wednesday:

The GFS (the major long-range model) finally shows an elongated area of low pressure in the Gulf on Monday, with a bulls-eye of heavy precip moving into the same area as the JMA predicts, but on Monday afternoon:

and the GFS ensembles (slightly different perturbations) more or less agreed on a low pressure somewhere off the coast of Louisiana, just before landfall:

The NOGAPS (the Navy's long-range model) shows rain around the west coast of Florida much of the period but has no bulls-eyes or low pressure centers.

Commercial companies in America are restricted from showing most significant model data from models run in Europe, but from what I can tell, the UKMET (from the U.K., duh) shows a precip center, but no significant low pressure system, in the middle of the Gulf Sunday night.

Joe Bastardi says of the European (ECMWF model) in his blog last night:

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