NEARING CATEGORY 5 STATUS DORIAN AIMS ITS FURY AT THE NW BAHAMAS 

The Eastward track trend that began to show up in the modeling a couple days ago continues in the latest data.

The problem identifying where the greatest impacts will occur continues to be the very slow movement of Dorian and the risk it will stall for a while. The other tricky mystery is when and where it will start to turn North into a weakness between two ridges of high pressure, one over the Western U.S. and the other over the Central Atlantic:

How the strength size and shape of the upper level ridges and the trough of low pressure (dashed black line) evolve in the days ahead will determine where the storm can fit in as it is pushed along by the East to West wind flow over the Southern Atlantic Ocean.

(See previous blog posts if you missed them)

It’s expected to hit the Bahamas by Thursday as a Cat 4 on a scale of 5 but is expected to go easier on Florida than earlier models suggested but now threatens the Carolinas more and to some extent the Georgia coast.

NHC OFFICIAL FORECAST:

Virtually all of the models have shifted the forecast track of the eye East with some variations on specific path:

Gee, for SOME reason there seems to be an obvious “hole” in the Marine Traffic off the SE Coast:

ECMWF OPERATIONAL DETERMINISTIC MODEL SUSTAINED SURFACE WINDS:

Wednesday afternoon:

Wednesday evening:

Thursday morning:

Thursday night:

Thursday night/Friday Morning:

EURO WAVES:

Tuesday night:

Thursday night/Friday morning:

So it looks like after devastation for the Northern Bahamas it parallels the Florida Coast roughly 100 miles offshore give or take, then brushes the Georgia coast before hitting South and North Carolina but too soon to call where the worst will be.

Obviously northing in weather is written in stone, predicting the future is hard which is why almost nobody even tries.

Models are guidance not gospel so stay tuned for new information.

For updates follow me on Twitter @MellishMeterWSB.