Landfalling south of Naples would bring devestating impacts to the east coast, exactly like Wilma did. Dade-Broward-Palm Beach is the most populated part of the state and the eye going through there would be nearly worst case scenario.
Tampa Bay has an average depth of only 12 feet so there is relatively very little water to pile up compared to all the water that can be pushed the other way from the GOM.
06z Euro making landfall at Sarasota/Bradenton and 24 hours later only getting to Lakeland which is only 50 miles away. Although this run initializes at 989 mb over Cuba so not sure if the wrong intensity would affect the track.
12z Icon correcting way west. That was always the eastern outlier so it looks like everything is starting to come together. Tampa could dodge a huge bullet.
It will still have huge surge though. Surge isn't correlated with the intensity at landfall but is a function of the size, intensity, and time over water of the entire history of the storm. All the water that the storm was pushing out in front of it will still be there. Similar situation as Sandy which was a massive storm over water for a very long time and even though it made landfall with only cat 1 winds, those other factors caused 14 foot storm surges.
Not sure if I'm being a weenie but it kind of looks like the low level swirl is moving due north on visible. A little hard to tell through the taller clouds but that's what my eyes see.
Agreed. That's a nice little pop of deep convection right next to the center while it looks like the convection to the southwest is fading away. Fiona did the same thing and ended up keeping its LLC. Wouldn't be surprised to see the southern Florida landfall like Icon is showing.
It's nice to give him the benefit of the doubt but that makes no sense since he specifically said anywhere in Florida, plus this storm is coming from the Gulf side so if that's what he meant it doesn't apply to what we're dealing with here lol