Yucatan blasted; Wilma here Monday or Tuesday

A quick note this morning...I've got an 8AM soccer game this morning, and, as the 8 year old in the house has noticed, I don't type very quickly or correctly. :-)

Wilma this morning is over the very northeastern tip of the Yucatan. Max wind speeds are now 125 mph (Cat 3), and the central pressure is up to 935 mb (all as of 5 AM Saturday). Movement is nearly stationary, and a slow northward drift is expected during the day today. She made landfall on the Yucatan last night around 11 PM ET. The island of Cozumel was in the eye yesterday for about 7-10 hours, and some portions of the Yucatan have been reporting nearly 100 mph winds for the last 10 hours. Damage there is likely to be catastrophic.

Satellite images of Wilma this morning look a lot worse than she did yesterday morning. The eye is no longer visible on satellite, but can be located on radar images and in the surface reports. The areal extent of the high cloud tops (crudly indicative of the intense thunderstorms) has decreased. Dry air (bad for hurricanes) is located directly west of the storm.

From a "Florida-centric" viewpoint, the main question remains when will she emerge from Mexico and head our way? There is a ridge of high pressure to the north of Wilma that is basically keeping her over the Yucatan. Forecasting the movement of small-scale ridges like this one has obviously been an issue for everyone (humans and computers) all week. The official forecast has Wilma emerging from the Yucatan around midnight Sunday, and progressing across Florida during the day on Monday over the exact same forecast path (Naples to West Palm) as over the last 4 days.

Should this ridge keep Wilma over the Yucatan longer than Midnight tonight (which is a possibility) we would expect the storm to be weaker (longer interaction with land), the track across Florida would be further south; perhaps as far south as the Keys as late as Tuesday. Once again, what's bad for Mexico is good for Melbourne. Conversly, a faster emergence of Wilma over water will result in a stronger storm that could track closer to us late Sunday or on Monday. Based on the official track, we're still expecting tropical strom force winds here Monday.

A note about the track: As you've heard many times, the track isn't as important as is the wind field swath. The Navy tracking map link on the right has a confusing mass of mutant circles on it. These circles are actually the forecast radii of various wind speeds. The outer (black) circle is tropical storm force winds, the red circle is 50 knot (58 mph) winds. There is a third inner black circle representing hurricane force winds.

Finally, some have asked for an RSS type feed to this blog, so you don't have to keep visiting. I've added a feedburner feed icon on the bottom right which is supposed to allow readers to subscribe; I've never used this before, so comments, suggestions, and feedback are welcome.

(Edit to correct wind speed radii)