I was watching this this afternoon and it looks intense to me as well. The last 2 hours in particular have wrapped her CDO into some impressive symmetry.

She also appears to me to be already moving NW... The last 5 hours of looping is tough to argue against. I have a thread going over in the forecast lounge that discusses some things that could (and would need to) happen in order to keep this moving west. Clearly, those things are not taking place.

The recent ECM runs have been signaling a quasi -PNA pattern evolution for the U.S., and the thinking was that such a resulting Ohio Valley/Tennessee Valley ridge axis would probably merge with the persistent west/central Atlantic ridge. That would have pinned Bertha underneath, regardless of what the models had 3 days ago. However, Bertha moved too quickly across the Basin. I don't argue that there is a weakness in the geopotential medium and that there is some steering level response; just look at Bertha's motion.. However, her moving across the Atlantic Basin at near ludicrous speeds appears pretty clearly now to outrun these larger scale changes.