J Bastardi likes to be a maverick in some ways --- but don't discount his opinion. HE likes to be aggressive and make a forecast before everyone else --- sometimes they are seemingly prescient and sometimes way off --remember back to Nate earlier this year.

One way to think about it is that NHC reviews multiple computer models, the most recent data from observations and tries to pull out the best consensus -- when the models make a big jump they usually split the difference between the new data and their last forecast.

If accuweather sees a jump, the next forecast goes with the jump --all the way.