Irene has definitely tracked to the west this morning. How long and at what speed will probably determine which part of the EC will get impacted. I would expect some slowing down too but this storm has been hard to predict. I don't think the NHC expected a turn toward the left until another 36-48 hours. This movement was somewhat predicted by the FSUmm5 model, probably in response to the building ridge to the north. I don't think we'll get some confidence in the long-term track until we get some recon data on the storm structure and feed some drop sonde data into the models of the surrounding upper air environment. We need to remember, we have very observations of the upper atmosphere (other than Bermuda) over the open water.

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/float2-vis-loop.html