Central Florida Hurricane Center 2012

Looking at the WV loop and continuing my thought process from last night, this is what I see at this point in time....

The high over the gulf is retrograding westward, and its influence appears to be gone within the next day or two. This, unfortunately, is precisely what opens up a northward turn and prevents a westward track of the storm.

You can clearly see the impulse coming in from the pacific coast, with a quite-well-defined boundary over the NM/AZ/TX border area. The key question is - does this flatten out or does it move eastward while continuing to dig?

The ULL that looked to be bugging out west last night now is REALLY bugging out west, so that looks to be completely off the table. Unfortunate, as that would have been a storm-shredder. No such luck - by morning at present motion it will be very close to the border of MX/Belize and headed "off the map".

It appears that Ernesto is going to miss Jamaica to the north. This is a very significant shift, because small differences in track now translate into really big (200nm or more!) changes over the next 4-5 days. Part of the model problem we have at present is that the storm is not all that well "stacked" yet, and this is the same sort of jumpiness we saw last year with Katrina - anyone remember how Katrina was pointed at Appalachicola early on? As it got organized vertically, the models got a much better handle on it, and suddenly they started to move westward.

In this case, as the models seem to get a better "grasp", they appear to be moving eastward. That, given what appears to be the evolving upper air pattern, is what I'd expect - the prognostication is for the ridge to be broken down and the storm to be picked up and turned northward and eventually NE. The key question - WHEN?

One hint may be due to the high that is moving off to the west over the Gulf. It looks like its influence over Ernesto has basically been lost, thus, the track continues to shift ever-so-slightly to the north. A bit further northward and we get two events out of this - 1) the storm goes over more mountainous terrain in Cuba, which could knock it down more severely, but 2) an impact on the west coast of Florida cannot be ruled out, and the warning time will be cut materially over an impact on the northern Gulf Coast.

In any event water temperatures in the gulf and available oceanic heat content are both high - perhaps not enough to support a "super storm" but definitely more than enough to be major trouble.

I believe, as I did yesterday, that by Sunday evening we will have a far better idea of where this thing is going. If it misses Jamaica to the north then we are likely looking at a track that is significantly east of the current NHC consensus, but still within the cone. What has changed from my perspective is that I now rate the probability of a very significant fracture in the ridge over the gulf far higher than I did 24 hours ago. 24 hours back I would have bet against it, just based on the pattern over the last couple of weeks. Now, it appears more and more likely that not only will the fracture occur but that it will not rebuild materially in the next week - the stationary frontal boundary that was over the SE US has basically dissolved, and we have both a surface front being driven through from the TX panhandle and a low behind it coming off the Pacific, both being driven the jet impulse.

I see nothing that would force the storm out of the cone at this point, but realize that the cone covers the entire Gulf Coast from roughly Key West all the way to Corpus!

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