Sitting and waiting...

At this point the only thing we can really do is sit and wait... I'm still sticking with a Floyd like track with the main threat being North Carolina... I will say the models are all starting to come in line with the european... I still think they are all too far right but again at this point all I can do and watch it for a couple of days and see if it does start to feel a weakness in the ridge... Unfortunately with this type of forecast, if you are off on the turn by 100 miles, you might be off by 1,000 miles when it comes to the landfall... Hey it's just the nature of the beast!

The teleconnections said to me that it should stay much more west and not turn until it was in line with the Carolinas like Floyd did... The trough affecting Japan wasn't that impressive... One thing to consider is the fact that teleconnections can't pick up on small scale weaknesses in a ridge... Or when a ridge builds in stronger than expected west allowing a short but strong enough weakness to pull hurricanes north... It can give you a good idea of the overall pattern but it's fair from perfect... Especially when you are dealing with a small scale weakness in the overall flow... If the european is seeing this that far out, then I'll tip my hat to it and give it props... But I'm not going to change my forecast 7 days out just because the models say I should... Even though I usually love the european over the other global models, I still don't trust any model until you get inside 3 days... It will be interesting to see what happens...

On a side note I'm going to say this right now, DON'T SLEEP ON ANA!!! I know it's been destroyed by dry air but if it can somehow keep itself together and slide south of the islands towards the Gulf of Mexico, WATCH OUT! Claudette should show you that the Gulf is primed and if we get anything organized (established low-level circulation) then don't be shocked if it feeds back like a great white on a seal... The key is the next two days... If it can survive I would be very worried about Ana... The models don't show this but hey they didn't show Claudette either, which we knew was a threat for homegrown activity... Even just two days of no shear, no dry air, extremely warm deep waters, and you have to LOOK OUT!!! You got to love the challenge of forecasting the tropics!!! :-)