Acknowledgements. The authors first wish to thank Aleksandr Falkovich for providing the feature model and Eric Uhlhorn for providing the processed AXBT profiles. Next, we thank Michelle Mainelli and Stephen Baig for the processed SHA, d26, and TCHP data and for updating the GFDL model ocean initialization parameters in near real-time during the 2006 hurricane season. We also thank the HYCOM Consortium (RSMAS) for providing RSMAS HYCOM model output. Special thanks to all of the research members of the URI/GSO Numerical Modeling Lab for technical assistance and helpful suggestions. This research was funded by SAIC/NOAA/NCEP grant 4400080656, awarded to the Graduate School of Oceanography at URI, and a URI Distinguished Graduate Student Fellowship in Physical Oceanography, awarded to the first author.