11AM
Hurricane Warnings are now up.... From Florida City in Extreme Southern Mainland Florida, to Flager Beach Between Daytona And Jacksonville. This also includes Lake Okechobee. It is coming folks.

Hurricane warnings mean hurricane conditions can be expected within 24 hours... That does not mean landfall in 24 hours, just the edge of hurricane conditions. Today is the day to act folks.

Original Update
Good morning, as Hurricane Frances nears the Central Bahamas (Click here to read personal reports from the Bahama Islands), the latest projections are in this morning (As of 5AM) and the tracks shifted left, bringing the landfall point closer to Jupiter Inlet than Vero Beach, but still up through Central Florida into near Orlando... basically up the Florida's Turnpike.

Do not focus on the exact point of landfall, the deviation may be great up or down the coast because of the angle of approach!

The Hurricane watch was extended southward to include parts of the Upper keys and remains up north through Flagler Beach in Flager County.

However, Frances is a large storm, quite a deal so more than Charley in respect to pure area of winds and more. Do not take the point of landfall as the end all. It could be left or right of it, and depending the angle of approach it could be off quite a bit north or south. The forecast track has the storm moving painfully slow through Florida as well.

The fact that models are STILL split as to what Frances will do is also disturbing. Please don't take the projected track as the end all. From the Keys all the way into Carolinas. Hurricane Warnings will be issued today, and a lot of barrier islands in the watch area will likely be evacuated later today. (Please see local media/officials for up to date information on that)

More to come later today.

Hurricane Local Statements for Weather Offices in:

Melbourne (East Central Florida)
Miami (South Florida)
Key West (Florida Keys)

Local county by county information will no longer be updated unles there is breaking news here -- it's just impossible to keep up because of the size of the area under Hurricane Watch. Use the links in the last article to view county emergency management webpages. Florida Disaster.org is the state em page, with links to locals as well.

Definitely more to come later...

** SITE NOTE ** This website is receiving way beyond record traffic today, it will be slow, it will go down ocasionally, but should be back up shortly when that happens. We've done everything we can to help this along short of dumping zillions into bandwidth and hardware to keep it going. Apologies in advance.

Jim Williams over at Hurricane City will be doing live broadcasts about Hurricane Frances startiing tonight at 8PM EST.

Event RelatedLinks
Frances Models -- This image animated over time
All model "Spaghetti" for Frances from hurricanealley
The Caribbean Hurricane Page - updates from the islands
Caribbean Island Weather Reports
Nice color satellite image of Frances approach
High Speed Satellite Loops of Frances (Click floater)

General Links
Current Aircraft Recon Info

NRL Monterey Marine Meteorology Division Forecast Track of Active Systems (Good Forecast Track Graphic and Satellite Photos)

Check the Storm Forum from time to time for comments on any new developing system.

Follow worldwide SST evolution here:

Global SST Animation

NASA GHCC Interactive Satellite images at:

North Atlantic Visible (Daytime Only), Infrared, Water Vapor
LSU Sat images

Some forecast models:
NGM, AVN, MRF, ETA ECMWF
AVN, CMC, GFDL, JMA, NOGAPS, UKMET

DoD Weather Models (NOGAPS, AVN, MRF)

Multi-model plots from WREL
Other commentary at Independentwx.com, Robert Lightbown/Crown Weather Tropical Update Accuweather's Joe Bastardi (now subcriber only unfortunately), Hurricane Alley North Atlantic Page, Cyclomax (Rich B.), Hurricane City , mpittweather , WXRisk, Gary Gray's Millennium Weather, storm2k, Barometer Bob's Hurricane Hollow, Snonut,

Even more on the links page.