Tropical Storm Alpha Forms in the Eastern Caribbean. Hurricane Watches Up For Florida

The GOES Floater IR-4 channel clearly shows motion of the COC NE in the last several frames. If this keeps up there's no way this thing is going in as far south as Naples.

The trough axis and features involved in it are really quite cool -and complex. There's a clear low now roughly off the MN/SD border diving southward, which looks to amplifiy that trough. The surface frontal boundary is now roughly over Tampa, BUT it has lifted north and east - the tail of it is over Tampa, with almost none of it in the gulf itself. This leaves the amplification behind it to steer , and there is now a weakness appearing to form further north by 100nm or so - looks to be over Cedar Key, roughly, in another 6 hours or so.

I do not have any expectation that would get drawn up THAT far north, but I would not let my guard down anywhere on the west coast, as I've said repeatedly. I am definitely not buying the "depressed southward" type of path with any sort of certainty, although I'm also not going to say that it WON'T happen either.

If the amplification tilts the trough axis and drives it southward, which, by the way, jives with the local forecast for overnight lows and daytime highs starting tomorrow night and into Monday then I would expect a more N-S axis on that trough. This would tend to reinforce a NE rather than ENE track.

I suspect you'll see a consolidation of the models with the ingestion of the next batch of data containing the movement off the coast; I wouldn't expect to see this fully developed in terms of model support until the morning hours - the 00Z updates won't have the data set to work with, so it will be the 06Z and later runs that IMHO will have the best read on this situation.

I still believe the highest risk area is from Sarasota to Tampa, which is the north half of the cone. This is consistent with where they posted watches though - they've got watches up all the way to Cedar Key it appears.... so if you go by the "watch box", I'm looking "right up the middle" (same place I was a couple of days ago!)

Now if we see an ENE bend in the next six hours or so then the black-line looks more probable - that is, more towards Naples. Note that no matter WHERE it goes the Tropical Storm Force winds now extend 200nm out from the center - which puts almost the entire west coast under the gun for at least some impact. Further, if that front lifts North, as it looks like its doing, you won't get the protective value of it north of the frontal boundary as it won't be there!

Let's see how the actual path develops once the circulation has had a few hours over water and a motion trend has been established. Until then, please - do not let your guard down anywhere along the west coast and in the Keys!

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