Let us not be fooled by Earl's ragged appearance in satellite late this day. This system has a massive circulation field comparative to typical for a system of this intensity, and therefor has a lot of integrate energy already. This TC has the potential to become quite large and powerful.

Looking at the CIMSS SAL analysis the contamination is beginning to homogenize into the surrounding medium. If it were just dry air, such as a subsidence ring (not a-typical to mote at TC with one) then this would have been less of an issue. That said, Earl appears to be heading into a region with very good to excellent U/A outflow potential, this should allow for unimpeded growth given to the anomalously warm SSTs. Large systems tend to evolve more slowly, so it will be interesting to observe how Earl taps into these factors over the next 48 hours. By Monday we should have a large and intense hurricane.

I don't want to put a lot of stock in these D5+ forecasts. Too much of that depends on the exact handling of the eastern North American and western Atlantic Basin synoptic evolution, much of which has been stochastic in the models with regard to all important details that could make for big positional changes. I do want to add, however, that sampling the area N of 25N around 50-60W will be very important for Earl's track beyond D3..4. The reason is because TC of Danielle's ilk will leave a huge influx of latent heat into the surrounding medium, and that will affect the post ridge strength at mid levels ... ultimately playing into the steering fields farther south when the time comes. This "might" be causal in some of this apparent left shifting in recent runs. I would be leary, however, of the BAMS and BAMM as they are limited layer models, where as the BAMD has more levels.