Well it's good to be back. Thanks to Mike and everyone else who has a hand in keeping this site up and running. Now to Ivan.

Once again many of the models have put us here in Florida under the bullseye. The problem that I've noticed with the models so far is that they've trended too far north. Even comparing the runs from last night to this morning it's easy to see that Ivan has not followed the more northerly path that many have forecasted. What does this mean? Well it's very important how far north Ivan is when the trough comes through and weakens the ridge that is currently keeping Ivan south and moving WNW(much like Frances). However, most of the models right now believe that sooner rather than later Ivan will be far enough north to start his turn within the next day or so(Thursday night/Friday morning). But like I said most of the models have also had Ivan a bit too far north to begin with. If Ivan stays far enough south he won't start the north turn until he's gotten much farther west than many of the models have forecasted. Bringing him probably over the western end of Cuba and hopefully staying off the coast of Florida. Basically it comes down to whether Ivan is far enough north to take advantage of the weakness in the ridge over Florida that he makes a sharp turn to the NW then North. If not, then he continues chugging to the west until the other low, currently over the SW U.S. moves through and forces him to make a turn. It will be very important to see where Ivan is when he reaches Jamaica. Further south than currently forecasted and he probably doesn't make a dramatic NW/N turn. Either way everyone needs to pray for the people in Jamaica because they are going to be hit hard no matter what.