Latest Dennis Ruminations

It's still going to be an uncomfortable Saturday night in Tampa, but some of the forecasting nuances have changed, with the forecasting camps switching sides. The NOGAPS and ETA models show Dennis heading farther west (NOGAPS with a Mississippi landfall: ETA with a Louisiana landfall). On the other hand, the GFS model shows the storm hugging the west Florida coast, with a panhandle Florida landfall. The National Hurricane Center is switching sides and going with the Florida coast huggers, but I suspect they may be wrong.

Much depends on whether the trough passing through the eastern U.S. can steer the storm along the western Florida coast, as they so frequently are capable of doing. At the moment, though, the northern and southern parts of the trough are desynchronizing in their eastward movement (the northern part moves faster than the southern part, which tends to leave the southern part an orphan trough). There is also, as part of the southern trough, a weak mid-level trough over eastern Texas, which isn't much, may be weakening, may hardly be there at all (kind of an artifact). It's not moving much, though, and I'm thinking the storm will be drawn westwards towards that, rather than slavishly following the northern trough, or will try to split the difference.

So, that's the good news at the moment (for west coast Floridians south of Tallahassee, but not for Louisianans, Mississippians, etc.)