the center jumped north today as it was rounding/interacting with that upper low.. which is now pulling away wsw. katrina is now in the wake of a withdrawing upper low--which is greatly enhancing the outflow. 5pm disco already mentioned the kind of inner core changes that can take place if a solid ring of deep convection can form. waters between florida and the bahamas are about as juiced as anywhere in the basin in terms of heat content... the cat 1 call i made is middle ground between the circulation not consolidating and dry air not mixing out, and what would happen if rapid deepening takes place.
nhc has been adjusting the post-peninsula crossing track to the right today. my earlier call to ms/al is now way left of the official... i'll reset it when katrina is done crossing florida, but i missed the boat with the synoptic pattern. the model consensus has shifted right, but there are still some taking it further out into the gulf. the way things are looking katrina will be all florida, though. clark's panhandle call last night was right on, if this stuff verifies. i hear the fla west coasters discussing how some are taking it off and then up the coast or back in. that looks overdone to me, as the globals that favor it have one of those tarbaby disturbances coming in from the east... those don't look legit just yet.
97L is still being rated as just that. it's definitely got a closed low and a disjointed area of deep convection... which has continued for a couple of days now. it's what i'll call a sheared tropical cyclone. expect it to get the profile necessary for the nhc to rate it, though i've seen features like this before persist for days and all the nhc does is mention that it may become a depression in the outlook.
globals still seeing the feature tailing 97L... some developing it as it gets further west. it's a watcher for around the weekend.
HF 2136z24august