Thing is, while the NE is going to get a Nor'Easter, it doesn't appear that it will be the monster hybrid/baroclinic thing that it could have been.

My concern a couple of days ago was the possibility that Wilma would get picked up earlier and the tilt on the trough would have been greater. In that case, a direct impact of the circulation moving northward along the trough somewhere from LI to Maine could have occurred. The GFDL kept insisting on this, and the setup looked good for it.

By late yesterday it became clear that the trough had outrun this possibility, and that set up the almost straight E-W trough axis that prevented a more northward track for Wilma over Florida.

The axis Wilma is riding up is well offshore, and odds are that she won't even hit the maritimes. This is a good thing, because had that axis been further westward this would have hit like a solid Cat 5 storm in terms of windfield on the east side, when you consider the winds themselves and then forward speed. That sort of hit in the NE was almost completely unexpected, and it would have come with very little warning.

Thank God it looks like its not going to happen. I remain SLIGHTLY concerned as the WV imagery still shows the northern outflow jet over land and a nearly-straight-north path to it. The GFDL's latest run doesn't appear to pick up the surface feature that my most-recently-available surface map shows correctly, which is a bit troublesome..... the GFDL takes Wilma cleanly offshore, but that's predicated on structures that it progged for now (from when it was run) that aren't reflected in the "nowcast" surface map.

I would say that prudence is advised in the NE, as they're getting and will continue to get a hell of a rain and wind event anyway. If nothing else Wilma will contribute plenty of moisture to a VERY cold environment at the boundary, which adds up to a LOT of precip in an area that can't afford it right now.

This is one time I'm going to be pleased if I have two "busts" in terms of what looked, to me, to be developing, because they're both interrelated, and while the NE is getting soaked and is in for plenty more of it, if 130kt winds and a 30+kt forward speed had been added to that, with the east side of that circ coming onshore up there, it would have been catastrophic.

I've got reports from some friends with marine interests in the Miami area. They got hammered but are ok; the damage was heavy but not catastrophic.