Good morning...
Changes/observations since yesterday:
1. Biggest news is that models have significantly tightened in the past 12 hours. Outside 2 outliers, the entire ensemble resides on a landfall between Clearwater, FL and Venice, FL. That is an area about 1/4 the real estate since the last run.
2. NHC's "Cone"'s size has adjusted downward to reflect the better model agreement. It now resides between the FL big bend area hit by Helene and Naples, FL.
3. Relative to Helene, the size of Milton is about 1/2. But, that really doesn't matter in the severity of wind speed. Sometimes these smaller physical storms have the ability to able to more rapidly intensify. We don't know yet, with Milton, but that possiblity exists.
4. Sat loops are interesting. There is a heck of trough hanging around just inland in the northern Gulf. IMO that, how and if it persists, modifies or moves will be the one most signifcant factor on MIlton's direction. And to give you an idea, of the depth of this frontal trough, is the differential in dew points, It is in the Low 60's (DP) inland along the upper GOM. While most of FL in the mid to upper 70's.
5. Movement. Even though the NHC is stating the storm is moving East at 5 mph, I am not absolutely sure this exactly true at this point. One danger in forecasting, especially early on, is the CIC will often, (almost always) relocate 50-75 miles at random whim. Re-initialization with a couple of these wobbles, could signifcantly alter the storms location, thusly final destination.
6. Intensity.... Now this gets the wierd award for the day. The intensity models have it all over the map. Of the 9 models...
2 have it reaching Cat 5
2 have it at Cat 4
2 have it at Cat 3
1 at Cat 2
2 at Cat 1
I beleive this wide variabliity has a lot to do around how much of the drier upper GOM upper air entrusion gets into the storm. With that I beleive that the more south the strom traverses, the more chance it will be in the upper tier.
