It's very likely we have a developing llc under the convection probably somewhere around 12.5N and 66W. This is roughly 75 miles north of the current fix by NHC. This will have a significant impact on the track of the storm. 75 miles may not seem like much, but this is where the butterfly effecting comes in. To put it simply, a small change in the near term can lead drastic changes in the long term. A few good examples of this was the GFS being too far east in the short term with the tropical wave that became Agatha and Alex and thus was blowing up the storm in the Gulf. Another one was hurricane Nicholas when an old vort got spit out and moved southward and erroneously got fixed by NHC and sent the models east towards southeast Louisiana. In reality the center was further north and the storm made it's first landfall along the upper Texas coast. Finally, the probably most drastic example was Dorian's reformation to the north that changed the path from a sure death over Hispaniola to a track north of the Greater Antilles. As of now, short term steering will be dictated by old circulation to the south acting as a pseudo gyre. That circulation should die over land over the next day or two. From there the rest depends on the strength of the storm. The strong PTC 2 gets, the more it will feel the weakness. A further north PTC 2 will have more opportunity to get stronger. If that occurs this will lead to more corrections northward over time. Anyone that's confident in the current forecast shouldn't be. Model consensus is useless if it's consistently receiving bad data. Until a dominant llc has developed and been fixed and fed for at least 2 to 3 model cycles, everything is on the table now. That includes places as far east as Jamaica and western Cuba.
What to watch going forward is how satellite behaves. As of now I'm looking for what I like to call a storm awakening it's Sharingan for you Naruto fans out there. In this case a tomoe in the Sharingan is a rotating hot tower in a tropical cyclone. In this case I'm looking for a 2 tomoe awakening as 2 rotating hot towers will clue me in that this storm is approaching hurricane status. Once that northern llc takes over, I don't think it will take long as long as convection persists.
