That ****-ing NW-SE stream from south-central Canada down into the mid-Atlantic. The thing about the favorable tropical forcing etc I thought was it was supposed to make that go away, at least temporarily. What's it going to take to allow for a trough to dig into the western US and spin out a sequence of shortwaves that can then traverse the central and eastern US unimpeded, with ready access to rich Gulf moisture, as happened in years like 1999, 2004 and 2008?