don't think i'll close it up completely yet, but going to narrow my strike window tonight. still expecting a stairstep near the bahamas and a terminal left. think it will come ashore as a 3/4 between daytona and beaufort.. emphasis near brunswick, ga.. moving wnw/nw at the time. the harder recurvature shown in the ncep globals looks a tad too extreme for me (too much ridge strength for nnw movement east of 80w), and much of the rest of the globals are drifting around or painting central florida... like to stay a little right of the consensus as a matter of course. intensity is hard to prog, but follow the idea that it oscillates around 120-130 kt for the next 3 days or so then slowly weakens as it nears the coastline... to around 110-120kt range. system has accelerated a bit more than i expected.. but landfall timeframe still centered on sunday morning, september 5th.
gonna stick to this general idea, until it becomes unfeasible or verifies.
gaston heading out this evening, likely an advisory or three from being declared extratropical.
elsewhere in the basin rather irked that nhc isn't classifying the system nw of the cape verdes (97L).. sheared or not the dvorak rating has risen today to a paired 2.5 and that's tropical storm intensity. since the system is sheared and the vortex partially exposed, it has the obvious qualifications for at least depression status.. but nhc is still feeding us the same line of 'chance to develop'. it's window for classification will close soon.. possibly for a while and potentially for good.. as it encounters the upper wsw jet from the upper low digging in frances wake. it should move w to wnw as a sheared system and do little in the way of further developing for 3-4 days.
another wave has exited and has a large envelope of rotation at the mid-levels.. but is low latitude and convectively mediocre... globals develop it by late in the week.
that's the tropics as august is coming to a close.
HF 2238z31august