TD8 forms off the US east coast...

Sorry for the lack of updates the past week, I was on vacation.  During 
that week, Franklin meandered off the east coast of the US and then 
zipped off into the north central Atlantic, racking up 8 "named storm 
days", and Gert formed and followed a nearly identical track and 
intensity as Bret, collecting just 1 named storm day, neither making it 
to hurricane intensity.

Today at 21Z, a somewhat subtropical-looking disturbance was upgraded to 
TD #8, and is headed generally toward Bermuda.  The deep convection is 
quite removed from the low-level center, and there's an upper Low to the 
southwest of the surface Low.  All-in-all, it doesn't look very tropical 
to me!  It's located at 28.5N 68.7W and moving N at 11kts.  Satellite-
estimated intensity is 30kts and 1009mb.  It is forecast to gradually 
intensity to a weak tropical storm, at which point it would be named 
Harvey.  A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Bermuda, and it 
should pass very near the island tomorrow night.

Elsewhere, there's a healthy easterly wave at about 11N 24W, tracking 
slowly westward at 5kts.  Although not real impressive now, conditions 
are favorable for it to develop.  This wave's origins can be tracked 
back to far eastern Africa on July 26... so it took about 8 days to get 
to its current location near the Cape Verde Islands.

The NTC for 2005 stands at 68.4% as of this afternoon.  The average NTC 
for this time of year is somewhere around 8%.

Please visit my tropical Atlantic headquarters.