There is some slight radar attenuation here (more of a mid-level capture), but this shows Beryl tracked over the southern side of Cozumel this morning (north of most model guidance):
Most model guidance even from 00z didn't full capture this. This was from the 00z early guidance last night:
The trend from the ECMWF ensembles captures this better. This is an animation of the past 5 runs, which has also shifted northward:
This puts Beryl in the northern cluster of ECMWF ensemble members currently. It's unknown the structural core of Beryl after it's track over the Yucatan, but from current radar images from Cozumel, the eastern eyewall still remains intact (note, it's difficult for the radar to penetrate through the core to assess the western or southern quadrants):
Taking a step back to look at the bigger picture here, we have our aforementioned ULL backing to the west towards Mexico. This will impart southwesterly flow at the upper-levels (orange), meanwhile Beryl is moving WNW with the low-level flow (pink). We can already see this occurring with the outflowing banding pattern to the north of Beryl:
The net result will be ~20 kt of directional shear, as we can see from the HWRF sounding as Beryl departs the coast and emerges into the GOM:
This is where things get interesting. While the ULL will initially shear Beryl, in about 24 hours it will have moved over northeastern Mexico and begin to weaken. If the structure of Beryl remains organized, we could see some slow strengthening over the 24-48 hour period. The HWRF again captures this evolution well:
After 48 hours, as we also see in the loop above, there is a sudden slow down as Beryl approaches the coast, and a stronger Beryl at this this point will begin to feel the northward tug of the upper-level weakness. How vertically deep Beryl is and how far west the system progresses to this point will have significant track implications. One last note, as Beryl approaches the coast, shear will be minimal and SSTs begin to increase. We can see in the sea surface temperature graphic below, this region has some of the highest SSTs in the Atlantic currently. This would likely cause a near ideal environment for Beryl to strengthen on approach to the coast (and I don't think anyone needs a reminder on storms undergoing RI in this region):
But can't deny that chill that creeps into the bones lol
