I posted this on the last forum, but, alas, Clark was already on the ball with this new one! Our local met on Bay News 9 said at 4:50pm: "We've been keeping an eye on a broad area of low pressure and at any time they feel it necessary, the NHC can send a plane out there to check it out." Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Anyway, from what I could glean from the same met 10 minutes later was this: the Bermuda high is creating steering winds lined up like this:
^^^
^^^
^^^
surrounding Florida, and the the low would be on the left side of those steering winds, which would keep it from coming closer to us here on the west coast of Florida. Then again, he mentioned that depending on how fast or how slow this system moves, everything could go squirrley so we need to pay close attention to it until it's past us.
So, here's the gist: most of the rain will be on the eastern side of the storm. The closer the storm is to Florida, the more rain we get. If, on the other hand, it's offshore by 300-400 miles (maybe less) then we get the benefit of some nice weather.
The models seem to have been in agreement with this storm since they latched on, so unless something weird happens, I'm not all that concerned about west central Florida taking a direct hit. That being said, I am concerned that if it stays close enough to our coast line, we will have a lot of flooding problems and there are so many people who still have blue tarps up that it's not even funny.
My Mom called me and asked me if I thought it would be safe for them to drive down on Friday as planned; I told her that I would just keep an eye on the weather and if they have to postpone it by a day then that would be the safest thing to do.
Sorry for being so scientific in my explanations, it's just my nature.