Yeah just keeping fingers crossed the 18Z Euro and Icon are wrong about the intensity. They had some issues with Harvey in 2017 and Delta in 2020. Both those storms took off pretty fast.
That looks ugly, might still be a tropical storm when it hits Cuba if that verifies. It has 36 hrs of very favorable conditions but if the initial low is weak and disorganized it won't be able to take advantage.
GFS is the furthest west of any model so it''s probably wrong.
One reason is it might be having some convective feedback issues in the 42-96hr time frame. Convective blobs appear to reform the center further west several times in this timeframe.
With cooler waters and increasing shear, it's possible the pressure doesn't change much between now and landfall. Just a big expansion of the windfield due to ET transition.
Family good track agreement from the GFS and Euro for 10 days out. GFS is quicker with development as usual.
Also looks like another weaker solutions stay further south deal on the ensembles.
Guess it's a matter of taste, some like the exact center, some like the right front quad eyewall. Based on this, I'd put Ponce on the exceeded cat1 expectations list.
Don't know what the HWRF is doing. Has it deepening from 1004 MB to 985MB in 3 hrs. HMON shows a similar convective burst and quick deepening before PR, but it's over 24hrs not 3
Yeah this is a very intensity dependent track. If it's stronger the deep layer steering turns it north. I am leaning weaker since shear really seems to be kicking it's ass right now and I don't see much change in the upper level wind configuration over the next few days.