IR appearance has degraded, but on radar the center is as clear as it's ever looked. I expect Cuba interaction will disturb it somewhat, but it should be fully recovered by tomorrow morning
Sure looks like Henri is strengthening right now. I would imagine this will continue for the ~3 degrees latitude Henri has left of serviceably hot waters
Henri is quickly building outflow to the west, though it is still restricted to the North. Impressive convection nonetheless though, I would bet that Henri is near, if not at, hurricane status.
I like to hold the 3k NAM as the theoretical maximum of a current system. Plenty of systems have verified with the NAM before, but usually when they are in ideal conditions, or for whatever reason seem to "pull it off" given the current environment and overperform.
Pretty epic bust potential in either direction for this. I could buy a weak, sheared TS crossing hundreds of miles offshore, a cat 2 landfall in SE NE, or anything in between.
For NY/LI/Mid-Atlantic? Yeah Sandy will almost certainly be worse. I think the localized impacts may end up being worse for the Cape and some of SE new England.
It's worth pointing out that the SST's off the coast are running 2-3+ degrees Celsius above normal, which could potentially be lifting the relative latitude where a cyclone is able to maintain tropical characteristics.
Looking forwards to what recon finds today. IMO Henri was a hurricane all of yesterday, slightly weakened to a tropical storm overnight, and is now maintaining intensity in face of shear