Here she comes...

At 5 PM, everything appears to be progressing as forecast this morning. Wilma is now moving at 14 MPH to the NE, and she'll be picking up speed overnight. Winds have bumped up slightly to 105 MPH and the pressure has dropped a bit to 959 mb. The shear currently near the storm is weaker than forecast, so Wilma will most likely continue to gradually strengthen until landfall in SW Florida tomorrow morning. She might be a Cat 3 (115 MPH is the threshold) at landfall, but quibbling over 10 MPH of wind speed seems a bit trivial at this point.

As expected, once the turn began, the computer models are in rather good agreement on a track through south Florida tomorrow. Expectations remain that she'll spend only 6 hours or so over FL during the day tomorrow.

Here in Melbourne, the forecast for sustained 60 MPH winds, with gusts to 75 MPH (cat 1) still look good. Biggest threat will be from tornadoes; we'll be in a tornado watch until tomorrow afternoon, and there have already been confirmed tornadoes in Polk County and east of Yeehaw Junction this evening. If you've got a weather radio handy, you might want to make sure it's turned on for the next couple of days.

One neat thing about all this is the cold, dry air that will rush in here on the western edge of Wilma. Forecast lows on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are near 50. The record low for Tuesday morning is 51 (1982) and 48 (1990) for Wednesday. We're back to normal (80's/mid 60's) by Thursday.

Weather in the northeast US is likely to be extremely poor for the remainder of the week, as the remains of Wilma combine with Tropical Depression Alpha, and possibly merge with the trough of low pressure currently turning Wilma to create a huge low pressure mess (highly technical term there) in that part of the country.