HurricaneBelle wrote:caneman wrote:chaser1 wrote:We should have a stacked center around mid-afternoon. Once that occurs NHC will make any track adjustments although I don't imagine they will be significant. For now though, Steinhatchee seems like a safe bet. I just have a hard time seeing the storm making landfall south of that point. The only way I could see that occuring would be if any near-term COC reformation/Reorganization were to continue to occur either north or east of present track guidance. The increased confidence of the storm remaining west of the Western tip of Cuba suggests to me a very slightly increased angel of approach to landfall which I would think would tend to mean that any slight deviation to track, would be "northward" as opposed to "southward".
Except these systems almost always go slight east of track in this area.
Do they really? Everyone loves to cite Charley and Ian but those were two storms 18 years apart (and different cases, Ian's forecast was changed to south of Tampa Bay almost two days ahead of time unlike Charley). In the meantime you've had Hermine, Debby, Eta, Elsa, Idalia and others all track into the Big Bend/Cedar Key area pretty much as forecast without any major east shifts.
By no means am I suggesting anyone in the Tampa Bay area take this lightly and we always should prepare for the worst but the NHC knows what it's doing.
Irma also took a right turn and off the NHC track, hitting Naples instead of further up the coast like it was supposed to. I’ll
Never forget the meteorologist here saying “It happened again. It took an unexpected right turn.”
I know on Hermine, Debby and Idalia they stayed within the cone but they did nudge a little more right than forecast. Not a lot but a little.
Thus I do buy the argument that storms in the eastern gulf coming from the south do tend to get a little bit more of a shove right than they’re forecast to. Doesn’t happen all the time and no one is saying this will but history has said that it does happen and more than just a couple times.