Ok.....I just spent some time looking at all the past Ivan advisories. I was curious to see how far off the NHC has been on their five day forecast. I began with the first advisory on September 2. The initial 5 day forecast location predicted Ivan to be at 14.0N, 60.0W at 2pm on Sept 7. I then compared that to the actual place Ivan was on 9/7 at 2pm (11.9N, 61.2W). I did this for each succeeding day, comparing the 2pm forecast and actual locations. I drew up a map comparing the actual path of Ivan to the NHC five-day forecast plots. The attachment link above is my crude hand-drawn map....but you still get the idea. The red line is Ivan's actual track. The black line is the interconnected 5-day forecast plots. As we already knew, the NHC 5 day forecast has been skewed way north of where Ivan actually tracked (sometimes over 200 miles off). Initially, the hurricane was moving faster than projected....but in the past 3 days, the NHC projection has outpaced Ivan. The intensity forecast was awful as well. The hurricane center vastly underestimated the strength of Ivan from the start. Each five day forecast was off by a minimum of 20 knots and as much as 65 knots underestimated.
So, while I whole-heartedly agree that the guys and gals at the NHC do an outstanding job, they have been truly at a loss when it came to predicting Ivan's course or intensity.

--Lou