A parade of ... tropical cyclones?

This week looks to be quite busy in the North Atlantic basin. Gustav formed at the end of last week, weakened over Haiti at the beginning of this week, and is now traversing the high terrain of Jamaica. By the start of next week, it will likely be somewhere in the vicinity of southern Louisiana, definitely not a good omen for that state (after their disasterous encounter with Katrina, and to a lesser extent, Rita, in 2005). The timing also looks to coincide with the Republican Nat'l Convention in MSP, and no doubt if there's a disaster, multiple pundit comparisons will be made between the reaction / recovery from Katrina & whatever Gustav brings.

Hanna formed in the west-central Atlantic today and is currently interacting unfavorably with a mid-tropospheric upper-low just to its west... thus while immediate development is unlikely, Hanna will most probably pass within my 70/30 benchmark and thus will also threaten the US (my personal experience after 10+ years of observing & studying TCs is that if a TC passes southwest of the point 30°N 70°W, it more often than not impacts the SE coast somehow.)

Finally, in the Bay of Campeche and just off Africa, two additional tropical disturbances have formed and could develop over the coming days. It will make for great tropics-watching, and if I was teaching a course, I would certainly include these events in my lectures!