The kicker to help push Ophelia a little bit is coming, but I'm not sure I can see much of a northward motion just yet. There's an upper-level trough over SE Canada north of the Great Lakes with a shortwave trough along it extending down into Iowa (where an MCS has fired up today), but most of the forcing approaching the storm is extending from the NW to the SE. It's almost a similar upper-level scenario to Katrina, just with a much smaller magnitude. I wouldn't be surprised to see the northward motion of the storm relatively capped over the next day or so with the general motion being toward the east instead of northeast.

In any case, it's still a battle between the features over the US (now wanting to send it SE) and the weak upper-high near the Bahamas (now wanting to send it NE) making a slow movement to the east -- or just slightly north thereof -- likely over the next few days, starting tonight. No idea if such a motion would cause the ultimate landfall location to change significantly; that depends upon how strong a ridge builds back in north of the storm and if a trough slides by again to turn it more towards the north and west. The idea of a loop out at sea is a sound one, but there are still some differences on the location thereof; right now, I'd go a little further east than the NHC but not as far east as some of the model guidance.

Intensity forecast is largely unchanged...probably low-end category 2 in 4 days. If it heads back toward Florida (except for perhaps the Jacksonville area) in the long run, intensity will likely be capped due to upwelling and cooler shelf waters as it nears the coast.