after going wnw overnight the center is moving nw again.. looks like it will make landfall very close to cienfuegos. extrapolated path would take it back offshore near matanzas early in the evening. there is a saddle between uplands to the west near havana and the eastern two thirds of the island... dennis might thread the needle if it moves straight. then again, it will be landfalling near an eyewall replacement cycle.. last recon fix got 150kt flt lev winds and a 937 cpres. the storm will probably move offshore with its center in disarray... probably a 2/3. how quickly it spins back up is hard to say. environment and ssts in the se gulf will be supportive, so it will probably be 3/4 on saturday. the ssts in the northeast/north central gulf are 82-84, so it will probably be a 3 by that standard... then again it will be impacting the coast at more or less a right angle, which has been known to force minor strengthening. i'm really low confidence on this, but going to keep my target on walton/bay co florida as a cat 3 (105-110kt, 955mb or so), sunday afternoon. looked at joe b's thoughts and think they make sense too... aside from personal preferences the area around mobile/pensacola has been at the center of the model spread for a couple of days.
joe b is calling for the wave at 30w to develop over the coming days. i've been with him on that.. should really do much until it gets near 45w though. more northerly track, he says. yeah, models are doing that... did with pre-dennis, but i don't think this one will wait til the caribbean to develop. might bug luis next week... east coast worry if anything beyond that.
keep an eye on the western caribbean in the wake of dennis. a couple of models are following pressure falls there early next week (canadian, ukmet).. around the time that wave near 60w should be arriving on the scene.
by the way, also checked for 'analogs' last night. for cat 4 hurricanes in july, the ones in 1916 (gulf) and 1926 (bahamas, e fl) were the only two i spotted. audrey in '57 was very late june, so worth note in that sense. there were a few other seasons with early season activity like this one... 1959 for instance had it's 4th named storm form on july 5th (and get its name on july 7th).. 1966 had a 4 storm july.. and so did '95. 1933 was on its 5th storm by the end of july. '33 and '95, unfortunately, are probably our strongest analogs... 21 and 19 ts/hurricanes respectively. and back in '33 there was no satelite detection or recon, so that number may be low.
so what is this we're in now.. tsfh jr? starting to look like it.
HF 1733z08july