Still uncertain

As you've no doubt heard by now, yesterday the Hurricane Center finally found a closed circulation and classified the wave as "Fay". Unfortunately, it appears it will be at least another day before we're even a little certain where she'll go.

This morning, the center remains hard to find, as the storm is located somewhere over Hispaniola. Hispaniola is the most rugged of the Greater Antilles and has a well-earned reputation for disrupting well established tropical cyclones. Despite the impressive satellite presentation, Fay doesn't qualify (yet) as well established. As such, complete destruction isn't expected and, in fact, one might be able to argue the center is reforming to the south of the island.

Of course, what everyone wants (needs?) to know concerns the future track. Currently the storm is steered to the west by a ridge of high pressure to the north over Florida. Fay is expected to move around the western edge of this ridge over the next 5 days, making the evolution of this ridge rather important. On Friday, the general model consensus was for a track in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and landfall in the panhandle area. There is a hint the models early this morning have shifted eastward, bringing the storm over Florida on a Charlie (2004) type path. If Fay remains south of the official track, I think that would argue for the western solution rather than the eastern solution. At this point, model solutions are much like focusing a camera (for those that remember the days before auto focus cameras). It just might take another day to get the focus right.

By now most of you have figured out that if we have little confidence in the track forecast, then we really have no idea how strong it'll get. Fay still needs to deal with landmass interactions (Cuba) however, the wind shear is low and the water temperatures resemble bathwater, so strengthening is forecast once Fay finds itself over open waters. The longer Fay remains over water allow additional strengthening. In this case, a Gulf/panhandle track would probably result in a stronger hurricane (possibly cat 4) compared to some (not all) of the east coast of Florida tracks where the storm wouldn't be over the water as much.