  It is known that western boundary currents, which encounter a gap in their
supporting boundary, assume two dominant steady states: a loop current state
and a gap leaping state, and that transitions between these states display
hysteresis. However, a question of whether the idealized geometries considered
to date apply to the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current (LC) remained. Here, the
nonlinear potential vorticity advection-diffusions equations are solved, for
Gulf of Mexico topography, using Newton's Method. We demonstrate that, in
application to the LC in the Gulf of Mexico, the original conclusions do hold
and additionally describe peculiarities of the more realistic steady states
that have implications for the LC modeling and forecasting.
