okay, the center obviously is doing something different. it has spent the last couple of days encased in that large anticyclone aloft, with intense convection clinging to the southern flanks of the circulation. right now it has a small core flareup encircling the eastern side of the vortex, which is swinging westward, perhaps orbiting or interacting with a low-level perturbation running southward to around jamaica. it's not directly under the anticyclone anymore, a little closer to the retreating upper trough to the west. this is resulting in a southerly but still fairly divergent flow aloft, and seems to be supporting the surface center. haven't looked carefully at the other rotation you guys are spotting on radar.. may just be eddies at diffrent hgt levels associated with the detached convective flareups.
the center has sprinted westward, and as scott pointed out the guidance is implying just a bit more ridging to give it a last nudge before recurvature. when the system turns north it will probably be moving slow enough and in a fair enough environment to start deepening/restructuring all the goofy peripheral features which have prevented a more robust inner core from developing. think it will be a mid/high level tropical storm and cross western cuba the better part of monday am, and probably be a hurricane around monday late afternoon near the lower keys, maybe dry tortugas. if this thing swings up the coast far enough to clear the tampa bay area before landfall, it might not come in until late tuesday, and be a substantial hurricane by that time... especially if it deepens with a more compact structure. if the pressure starts falling 2-3mb/hr when it still has more than 12 hr to landfall, then it is going to rock some worlds.
we're inside 72 hours for all the fun and games on the gulf side (still not confident enough to call atlantic side effects if any)... but this is still a very hard system to call in terms of exact location/intensity. it is going to hit the coast at a moderately to highly oblique angle unless it goes in waaay to the north, i.e. the big bend or further west. it's pretty clear now, the further to the left the track stays, the higher it hits, the harder it hits. if you guys down in fort myers take a direct hit, it will be barely a hurricane if that... if it goes west of clearwater or spring hill it'll probably have a good bit more to it. just shift the current offical track left 30-50 miles and it's a whole different fay on the way.
you guys on the florida west coast are a lucky bunch, the bad ones have left you alone for a long time. fay has the potential (though slim at this point) to make up for that, but it will have to start marching to a different beat than the one it has kept thus far.
HF 1754z17august