The stubborn swirl that just wouldn't go away! After taking a slow grand tour of a good portion of the mid Atlantic real estate over the past couple of weeks, the remnants of Nicholas are still hanging on - and perhaps heading toward south Florida. The remnant low is quite weak but it persists - other more significant swirls have withered quickly...but not Nicholas.

Models, both tropical and global, have been remarkably consistent over the past few days in maintaining this system and moving it southwestward in the short term and westward in the mid term toward Florida - anywhere from the mid peninsula south to the Straits. Over the past 24 hours the Nicholas low level swirl has been in a rather tight anticyclonic loop. The low seems to have completed the loop and is now moving slowly southwestward. Some of the models keep a slow movement for yet another 24 hours before moving it rapidly toward south Florida.

Upper-level southwesterly shear has kept the convection well removed to the northeast of the center. Building high pressure to the north of the low should relax the shear by Saturday evening. The system will be heading into warmer waters so the intensification factor cannot be ignored. SHIPS has varied between 45 and 55 knots for the past couple of days. If the convection does not build back into the core, the low will remain a hybrid system, but a hybrid subtropical storm is not out of the question. Even if it is not reclassified, the pressure gradient will continue gusty northeast to east winds over the Florida east coast late Sunday through Monday. Regarding reclassification, if it does regain Depression status, I think that the name will again be Nicholas, especially since NRL Monterey has it on their board again as Nicholas.

What a long and interesting season this has been - I think that everyone (myself included) was worn out a few weeks ago. But we've had some rest and now we've got something old to re-watch this weekend.
ED

NRL Monterey Marine Meteorology Division Forecast Track of Active Systems (Good Forecast Track Graphic and Satellite Photos)

More discussion on the storm on our Storm Forum.

NASA GHCC Interactive Satellite images at:

North Atlantic Visible (Daytime Only), Infrared, Water Vapor

Some forecast models:
NGM, AVN, MRF, ETA ECMWF

DoD Weather Models (NOGAPS, AVN, MRF)
AVN, ECMWF, GFDL, MM5, NOGAPS, UKMET

Multi-model plots from WREL

Other commentary at Mike Anderson's East Coast Tropical Weather Center, Robert Lightbown/Crown Weather Tropical Update Accuweather's Joe Bastardi (now subcriber only unfortunately), Cyclomax (Rich B.), Hurricane City , mpittweather , Tropical Weather Watchers.Com (JasonM) Gary Gray's Millennium Weather, Barometer Bob's Hurricane Hollow, Snonut,
Even more on the links page.