A turn northward?

Possibly. And the forecast is a little more promising for EC Florida if the turn north had indeed begun.

The northerly shear (i.e., from north to south) beat the stuffing out of Hanna yesterday. At 5 AM this morning winds were at 50 MPH and the central pressure is 993 mb. Hanna is much closer to Hispaniola than the official forecasts ever contemplated. Just like Fay and Gus, a visit to Hispaniola appears to be required for tropical cyclones this summer.

We've had the airplanes flying in and around Hanna yesterday and today. The "easy" flight: a data gathering mission in a Gulfstream jet flying around, but nowhere near, the storm flew last night and logged extra data that was loaded into last night's forecast models. The "hard" flights (into the center of the storm) have also been flying to report the location of the center (good thing--figuring that out from a satellite loop isn't easy this morning). The "hard" flights report this morning that Hanna has begun to slowly move to the north. The 5 AM report was the first report of this motion, so I'm not entirely convinced it has started yet. Hopefully the motion is to the north and it is maintained for the next few days.

The "easy" misison data shifted the forecast tracks a little father off the EC Florida coast overnight. This is due in part to the storm motion toward the east over the last 12-ish hours. If Hanna maintains a motion to the north, then the forecast modeling should be a bit more accurate than it has been over the last few days (trying to solve an admittedly difficult modeling problem). The forecast still calls for landfall in South Carolina as a Cat 1 hurricane in 2-3 days.

Local impacts obviously will change with the forecast, since small wiggles in track can cause big problems in this case. The Navy Tracking Map (link in the right hand side menu bar) shows the expected wind speeds using the mutant circles. The outermost circle is the radius of 35 knot winds (about 40 mph). Subsequent circles are at 50 kts (about 58 mph) and 65 kts (75 mph). The current forecast has the 35 knot circle glancing the coast early Friday morning, so we'll get some wind and some rain. Since Hanna should be a fast mover, Fay-like rainfall amounts are not expected. It's still too early to figure if things will be closed on Thursday and/or Friday just yet.

Ike continues moving toward the west at 18 mph. He is expected to become a hurricane soon and the forecast has him as a strong Cat 2 storm in 5 days. Most of the models bend Ike to our south, save for two models that have Ike either farther north or recurving just off of our coastline (in 8 days). Too early to tell yet whether or not Ike will pose a problem for us yet.