For the first 72ish hours, the forecast for Dennis is very straightforward...a west to wnw motion towards Jamaica and Cuba....there is tremendous model and common sense agreement on this...there is very little chance that Dennis pulls up short and heads to the Atlantic coast of FL...this is almost certainly a GOM storm.

However, where in the GOM is still very much open to speculation.

Beyond 72, things, as Forecaster Stewart said tonight "get murky". The consensus is more to the west of the official NHC track...the reason is that the dynamic models are somewhat underforecasting the strength (compared to NHC thinking) of Dennis...stronger storms tend to want to move towards the poles...so Dennis might make a more northward motion than the modelling is catching at this point. The real key to this is the strength of the ridge and any potential weakness that develops with the ridge.

For once, I find myself agreeing almost completely with NHC. I am more to the east with my track than most of the modelling. However, at this time, I don't foresee a significant threat to SW FL unless something significantly changes (and it could, but I don't consider that to be a very likely scenario). My personal landfall range is from Cross City to Sabine Pass, with the most likely area from Grand Isle to Destin.

Words of caution: The models, almost certainly, will change dramatically over time...don't sit there hitting refresh on your browser and hang on every run...watch the trend, not the specific model output...trying to verify a particular model 5 days out is a fools errand...and trust me, I am one of the biggest fools you will find!