Steve wrote:No (response to xironman). I think land interaction on Florida will degrade it. However, Bahamas to NC in the SW Atlantic has been a hot spot for several years in a row as I'm sure it often is in the warm AMO periods. I could see it intensifying and hitting as a 3 or 4 but 900mb in that GFS run assumes it stays over the water. I'd buy 930ish which is devastating enough for sure. NAVGEM is initialized, CMC should be rolling shortly and HWRF looks like it is going to do a number on at least the southern Bahamas which many of us were outlining mid last week as the #1 concern. Looks really bad so far on the HWRF run, like a freight train coming.
Seems reasonable, my current guess is the storm won't go so deep in the peninsula to degrade the core, so once it knocks back into the ocean it will be ready to go. The TCHP seems pretty excessive for the area now, warmer than the loop current. The 200mb winds seem to be headed in the same way as the storm when it is so I don't know if they will rip it.