Hurricane Ivan and Tampa

I've been trying to put my education to use, by forecasting Hurricane Ivan's impacts in the Tampa area, where Dwight and Linda recently retired. They have plane tickets to flee, but need as much reliable guidance as possible before making that decision.

Essentially, there are no changes from 12 hours ago. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is finally acknowledging indications Ivan's track will be a bit westwards: they've been slow to do so because I think they are deeply worried about lulling people in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area into complacency, and the models still haven't reached a strong consensus. NHC now shows the track having landfall at Apalachicola, in the Florida Panhandle. Still, the NOGAPS model is now showing landfall a bit farther west, at Panama City, so NHC may eventually nudge their forecast track yet farther west.

If I had to guess maximum wind speed in Tampa based upon the current forecast, just from eyeballing the plotted wind fields, I'd say about 45 mph. Uncomfortable sailing weather, and good enough for scattered, sporadic power outages, but nothing wholesale. Plus rain...maybe quite a bit!

NHC is looking at output from all models, and the models have tended to diverge after Ivan crosses Cuba, which (understandably so) tends to paralyze decision-making and make NHC quite cautious. My philosophy has been to pick one model and go with it, rather than look at everything: the man with one watch knows what time it is, whereas the man with two watches is never sure. At FNMOC, they feature both NOGAPS and GFS model output, but I've always favored NOGAPS - GFS is too, hmmm...., quick for me.

I just hope Ivan doesn't have any tricks planned.