Jeanne drenching the eastern seaboard, Lisa still a TS...

So far 9 deaths have been blamed on Jeanne in the US, and about 1500 in
Haiti and Dominican Republic (with 900+ still missing).  Although not
producing tornadoes as prolifically as Ivan did, Jeanne has produced a
few, but the main story is RAIN... 1-2 feet at places.  Heavy rain over
the same areas that saw rain from Charley, Frances, and Ivan.

Of the big landfalls this year, Jeanne has been the least deadly in the
US, but the most deadly overall.  Charley, Frances, and Ivan were
responsible for 82 US fatalities combined.  Sadly, some long-dead are
coming back to the surface too; the rain-soaked earth in the southeast
is letting buried coffins in cemetaries come to the surface, creating a
rather unpleasant clean-up job.  The worst of the weather associated
with Jeanne is now hitting MD, PA, NJ, and NY, where Tornado and Flood
Watches/Warnings cover those states.

Despite forecasters' urge to strengthen the storm, Lisa has remained a
strongly-sheared Tropical Storm, no threat to land.  The convection has
been displaced from the low-level center for days now, so until that
corrects itself, it will not be able to intensity much, if at all.  At
15Z, TS Lisa was located at 25.0N 47.1W and moving N at 10kts. 
Satellite-estimated intensity is 45kts and 1000mb.

Elsewhere, there is a tropical wave at about 30W that is not very well
organized at the moment, but should be watched for development over the
next few days.  A couple of reliable computer models favor it, while the
rest do not.

As of this afternoon, the season's NTC (Net Tropical Cyclone activity)
is 218%.  In other words, this measure shows that more than twice the
activity of an entire average season has already occured.  This puts
2004 in 4th place since 1900, only behind 1995 (222%), 1926 (229%), and
1950 (230%).  Two more months until the official end of hurricane
season.  A remarkable facet of this season is that out of the 7
hurricanes we've had, 6 of them have made it to CAT3 or higher.  On top
of that, they have generally maintained that intensity for 1.8x longer
than the typical major hurricane.

Please visit my tropical Atlantic headquarters.