It's possible it could even ride the coastline, bringing Category 2 to 4 conditions from West Palm Beach all the way up to Daytona - which would probably forever change that area of coastline.Ī more inland track would then mean the fate of any area would hinge on whether it fell on the "right" side (for a northward moving storm, the east side) with heavier winds, or the "left" side, with still strong, but less damaging winds. The closer to the coast the storm remains, the more strength it keeps. Within this consensus are minute, "unforecastable" details that would have huge impacts on actual weather conditions. Which brings me to the current consensus track: a "slow motion" landfall somewhere around West Palm Beach, then a painful, destructive crawl up the peninsula that could last two full days and bring hurricane conditions to an alarming number of people the full length of the state - save for the Panhandle, which would be largely spared. Track the storm with a live map: Active Storms In Atlantic - Tropical Storm Dorian (Remember, the margin of error in hurricane forecasting at this range is more than 200 miles!) By that I mean they show Dorian riding north on or along the east coast of the Florida peninsula - a strip of land about 150 miles wide. Right now I know of no model showing this result, but all of them are close to it. On the other end of the spectrum is a slowdown that is so pronounced that Dorian never reaches the east coast - turning north and either never making landfall, or eventually coming ashore somewhere north of Florida. As I mentioned yesterday, the UK has been the most accurate so far with this storm, which doesn't mean it will continue to score well, but is worth noting. Yet a cousin of this solution is the UK, which - while never dropping Dorian that far south - doesn't slow it down enough to avoid entering the Gulf of Mexico north of Tampa Bay, then making a second landfall in the eastern Panhandle. So I wouldn't take that possibility off the table, but it is looking more remote. ![]() Fortunately, the HMON no longer shows this result, nor does any other model of which I'm aware. The hurricane model HMON showed this yesterday - a monster storm, undamaged by land interaction, sitting off the coast of Naples, having passed south of Miami and grazed the Keys. ![]() It was - and still is - possible for Dorian to trend so far south it would actually get around the tip of the peninsula without making a landfall. The good news is that the window on some of these scenarios is closing. But a slowdown combined with an inevitable northward turn brings all sorts of options to the table. If Dorian were just trucking along at high speed, with no prospect of slowing down, the track would be much narrower. The problem here is the combination of track and speed and a storm that has thus far confounded the models pretty significantly. The first question seems simple enough: If Dorian is approaching the Florida coast perpendicularly, it should be easy to figure out where it's going to hit. It's still possible Dorian may not deliver a direct hit to Grand Bahama Island and Abaco Island, but even a near miss will do damage.
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