Well ... we have our selves a real dicey situation up in eastern Long Island, RI and eastern/SE MA.

I have been watching the water vapor imagery over the northwest Atlantic Basin periodically during the day and the ridge prominence in the vicinity is impressive as an anticyclonic lobe is currently pressing ESE toward the lower Maritimes. Enough so to make me want to question the NAM's recent east trend per the 12z and now 18z guidance cycles.

The key is going to be the exact morphology of the of the current closing deep layer vortex over the Great Lakes, and what effect that has on tipping the flow more south to north in orientation in the steering levels along and off the East Coast. The past 48 hours of modeling has unilaterally showed gradually more latitudinal amplitude (not just wind maxes) with that large synoptic evolution, which I believe is pretty strongly related to why we have inched Earl west over time.

That said, Earl seems really on a NNW trajectory to me as of the last 3 hours. We'll see how this holds ... but the last 1 hour "wobble motion" is also pretty clearly due N. The more north component this system gets earlier on, the better off SE New England will be. So this may tentatively be good news farther up the Coast.

NC and VA residence should definitely keep up with on-going preparations relative to advisory status