it looks like fay's center jumped wnw a few dozen miles when it passed the santiago area of cuba. looks like it did on cuban radar and on satellite. i'm wondering what implications that will have, because if it did fay just suckerpunched itself again with land effects and wrecked its vertical alignment. on the other hand, if the center weakens and takes a more westward jaunt today, it will get more of a swing out into the southeastern gulf. complicate that with the guidance opening back up by reading more into that shortwave due to pass to the north... it seems like those models may have it initialized too strong, but that's an awful lot of guidance biting on a nne track over florida until the descending high starts blocking it later in the week.
fay is an unusually sadistic storm, from the same school as ernesto in 2006. it does have dramatically better atmospheric conditions, yet has the same penchant for scourging itself on the most destructive landscape available, and hugging landmasses too closely to really organize/deepen. if it really has jumped its center, that could result in more vertical alignment problems and an continued inability to capitalize on the impressive outflow it has enjoyed for days. just got to see how far west it can get... that will have more bearing on what florida really ends up dealing with.
HF 1432z17august