before the usual analysis i s'pose i'll toss in some info on relatives and their experiences. mostly a laundry list of minor to moderate damage. cousin in orlando lost a large tree.. blocking the yard, roof damage on the house. power still out. uncle in winter park has only minor damage, power back on last night. grandparents in bartow.. limbs down, no power. aunt west of bowling green.. orange grove nearly destroyed, house fared o.k. utilities gone. uncle west of bowling green.. still no word. aunt in avon park.. most of roof blew off, house uninhabitable. that's the worst known.. away from the eye too. everyone is alive and unhurt... expect the unknowns to turn out fine.. for that i'm grateful.
basin looks a lot quieter now with an open wave and a recurving fish spinner. earl had us all excited a couple days ago.. yesterday even. naturally, it's a speeding/open wave. rabbit voodoo strikes again (run rabbit run). it has a decent chance of closing up within a couple days.. but is looking strictly yucatan/BOC for the forecast period. too much uncertainty to say if it will try coming out of the BOC, if it can redevelop, if there is enough weakness in the ridge (or not too much low level easterly flow). too many layers of if.. easier to just say weak/mexico.. which is probably what will happen.
danielle.. classic neat recurvature far out to sea. most modeling has it going far enough north to guarantee that it's extratropical successor would be a weak occurrence as it nears europe. that's the way it's looking, at least.
development threats.. as the nhc discussion says, gfs keeps developing the wave currently south of the cv islands. it may falter some, but as it gets near 40w we can start looking for the organization the globals are calling for. not expecting a danielle slam-dunk recurvature out of this if it develops. in a day or two another significant wave will come off, though models don't seem very excited about it.
nothing that exciting anywhere else. other suspect areas would be sheer paranoia to mention. one maybe.. gfs insistence on not recurving danielle has me thinking it may be picking up on entrainment of some of the storm's energy into the loop of upper trough setting up shop southwest of the azores.. that's a remote plug for hybrid development, from out of the twilight zone. just a creeping thought.
my prayers are with those who had to contend with charley, may you all be blessed in your time of need, in the aftermath.
HF 0107z17august