From my first blog this morning:

Ernesto has survived and strengthened during the night. The system faced heavy shearing winds and those winds are now in retrograde from an Upper Level Low to the west, which is now moving west. The last model runs are indicating a CAT 3-4 event with eventual landfall somewhere around Panama City FL to Pensacola. The NHC official track remains substantially unchanged from last night. The track usually exhibits errors around 220nm per day, so I would not get to interested in the "where" at this point. The trending for recurvature is something I commented on a while back, seeing a lessening of a ridge of High Pressure that will move ENE late in the forecast. I still believe that to be true and the models are responding to that also. I was seeing this trend looking at some of the 192 hour models and see no reason to change that right now. The convection in the storm appears to be wrapping around the LLC and central pressure is dropping now to 997 Mb, but there is still a moderate level of shear to the west of the system preventing it from a full wrapup of convection. When that happens the central core of the storm will develop rapidly. Yesterday at this time the Center of Low Pressure was outrunning the convection due to the shear, but that is lots less pronounced today. Make no mistake, the northern Gulf Coast is at great risk, especially the panhandle of FL to New Iberia, LA. There are still some challenges this storm faces like a possible move across the Cuban mountains and other land interactions, but when it enters the Gulf, the only thing it will face is extremely warm water to throw gas on the fire. Needless to say, TODAY is no better day to make early preparations if you believe yourself to be at risk. There is time to prepare. Stay aware and prepare!