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After looking at the 8 PM Advisory, nothing at all has changed. Wilma continues in a West-Northwest direction and the advisory even mentions that if Wilma were to cross the Yucatan, it could bring massive surge. What is surprising about this advisory however is that the storm is maintaining Category 5 intenstity and a pressure of 892mb. Wilma is clearly going through an ERC based on the latest IR loop and microwave imagery, however, a wind field expansion or weakening has not taken place. This is an odd feature, but that just follows suit. This whole system has been odd.

Concerning the track, I read a few posts saying that nothing has happened to change the forecast reasoning today. There have been a lot of reasons. One main reason is that strong upper level low that was supposed to drive Wilma northward is moving way too fast and far too north. It's not going to have an influence on Wilma. The only factor that can drive Wilma north and then rapidly east, is a deep upper-layer trough that will be digging down into the Gulf of Mexico. However, there is some uncertainity of when the timing of that trough will occur. It is becoming more likely that the trough will not make it in time to pull Wilma to the north, which will mean this will be a no-event for Florida and have a catastrophic impact on the Yucatan pennisula. However, if it does dig down far enough the storm will be swept rapidly east, which makes an extreme southern Florida landfall likely.

Things are still looking better for West Central Florida and Southwest Florida. But, it all depends on the timing. If the storm picks up speed, it will be picked up by that trough a little latter and that could push it farther north on the Florida pennisula. But, once again that is a highly unlikely scenario. If it continues at this slow pace, and possibly slow down even further (as it is forecasted to do), the trough may miss the system completely, or sweep the system directly east (sharp right hand turn) once it reaches the Gulf of Mexico.

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Hi Zack.. Yeah, I agree with all of this but would just like to add that the u/a low that you have in mentioned, we don't really need that to be the impetus here... Fact is, we'd likly get a NNE acceleration without this initial pull... I posted a number of reason just recently so I'm a little down with longwinded typing for now ... Anyway, gonna be interesting to see how this all plays out; perhaps a great learning example for interaction with the westerlies.