there's a good bit more deep convection associated with ophelia this evening than there was earlier today, but the storm still has no real inner core. if it gets one back, it will be one of those ragged eye annular type storms. clark referred to isidore in 2002 as a reference system... not bad in this case. the storm is gaining vertical depth even if it doesn't do any reintensfication, so the westward jaunt will probably come to an end. today it has gone erratically wnw, now roughly due south of wilmington. i'm not really sure where it's going to come in, because it should be turning as it does, and the coastline will be oblique to it. add to that the fact that the storm center is very broad, and it could easily make the same sort of landfall that alex did in august 2004... partial. it could edge in very close to extreme eastern south carolina, around north myrtle beach. more likely it'll move across brunswick county north carolina, between calabash and cape fear. may or may not be a hurricane... but regardless there are going to be frequent squalls with gale force winds over a large area from georgetown northward all along the north carolina coast.. should be mostly a nuisance storm, but a long-lasting nuisance. the earlier progs capturing ophelia late in the week have pretty much evaported, so unless the storm unexpectedly decouples, it'll more than likely whip out to sea. might move close enough to cape cod/nantucket to mess the weather up there, but i doubt it will landfall in new england as some models have sporadically shown.
several of the globals are showing a disturbance in the western caribbean and another from the wave near the africa/islands midway point around the weekend timeframe. that mjo wave does appear to be progressing (the effect of the enhancing anomalies looks to already be present in the eastpac), so the atlantic ought to perk up some next week going into the end of the month. it looks to be coming on faster than i'd thought...
HF 0609z13september