i'm surprised the nhc didn't revise their disco really quickly before sending it out. wilma has lurched w-sw in the last couple of hours, and this subtle twitch and diversion is likely to add to the time over land. if the nw movment doesn't resume soon expect a ts/cat 1 range storm coming off the north yucatan tomorrow evening. if it does, cat 1/2 during the late afternoon instead.
once over the gulf for 12 hrs or so the storm should begin to reintensify slowly, unless the inner core is completely messed up. it can regain a category or two sunday/early monday as it nears florida. going to keep with the fort myers area as my bullseye, with the range from sarasota to chokoloskee. no keys, i'm thinking.. not that they won't get some nasty weather regardless. i'm not sure why the nhc is killing the intensity as much as it is over florida and off the east coast. they're either overusing ships or discarding the idea that the storm will begin to acquire baroclinic characteristics and deepen that way. i don't see why it won't... nao is still really freakin negative, and there's plenty of high latitude blocking.. this is the sort of pattern that encourages such things. if gfdl wasn't showing a sub-950mb system zipping up towards maine every other run i'd probably let this idea go, but i'm not about to as things stand.
the mexican government is really good about evacuating folks, and even though this is a really wicked hurricane there probably won't be many fatalities. on the other hand damage to the cozumel/cancun area has got to be pretty extensive. having a category 4 hurricane sit overhead all day can do that.
that invest 99L seems to have it's stuff together pretty well, but hispaniola figures in its future.. and beyond that it'll be closer to wilma (though the upper environment east of the bahamas looks ok. this little system might squeeze out a named storm, but it's going to be iffy. puerto rico radar shows what looks like a closed circulation right at the convective blow up near 15/65... visibles tomorrow morning might show a depression.
pattern going into the future is looking kinda static--deep trough in the east, mid level and upper ridge centered north of the eastern caribbean. result: waves coming underneath find a favorable environment to act up. there's also the issue of the surface high pressure persisting in the east, which favors synoptically lower pressure over the caribbean. gfs keeps wavering on the when/where (the current system goes up, then there appears to be something acting up in the western caribbean later next week... and something else which may be related moving into the eastern caribbean around then as well). pretty sure we're talking greek letter system(s) before the month is out. early november continues the pattern.
tsfh jr rolls on.
HF 0344z22october