Beyond the marginal SSTs right now and few areas of interest, more importantly it's the overall synoptic pattern setting into place that is a bit eye-popping right now. July might have a few early MDR systems, but August may be far more active this year versus previous recent active years.
Ensembles are really trying hard to resolve some kind of cyclogenesis in the MDR next week. It wouldn't be unprecedented. Thermal support is a little meh but SSTs have warmed moderately the past few weeks. If nothing else, it might make things interesting to track into the Eastern Caribbean graveyard that is typical at this point in the season. The suspect easterly wave does look very robust/healthy at this time.
The city of Slidell and St. Tammany Parish along the northeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain appears to have taken a pretty big hit from Claudette via flash flooding. Again, perhaps a weak sloppy system to scale for tropical cyclone organization. But really any organized coastal surface low in the right environment with intense convergent boundary riding inland can do a lot of damage by significant localized flash flooding.
You essentially started the majority of system threads since the early part of last decade. I really hope there was a backup archive. Otherwise that is beyond unfortunate. Glad to read you are not leaving though.
Wait, what? You're leaving? Wow, I just noticed a huge chunk of threads missing. Damn... Sheesh. Michael, Dorian, Irma (initial), Matthew threads. That's a huge amount of discussion gone forever.
Zeta is upgraded to Category 3 at Louisiana landfall in post analysis. Not surprising at all based on obs and data sets that were recorded. We had 94 mph sustained winds outside of the estimated highest returns. Perhaps the surprise is Zeta sustaining significant intensification over very marginal shallow shelf SSTs (25-26°C) prior to landfall. Though that may be explained by upper tropospheric temperatures in place at the late season date and mid-to-upper trough forcing ascent and lapse rates for Zeta's strong semi-circle eyewall structure.