97 L Seems To Be Honing In On Florida!

The images above are the latest images of 97 L. Guidance is pretty much in agreement tonight on this taking aim on Florida. The only guidance that stands out from taking Aim at Florida is the GGEM which has this making landfall in Louisiana .

Lets look at the GFS/ECM at 168 hrs.

GFS has a powerful system into Florida by 168 hrs.

ECM also has 97 L taking aim on Florida. One can plainly see there is a difference in strength between the two models with the GFS painting what would be a much stronger system then the ECM.

It is IMPORTANT to keep in mind that global models while good for track and synoptic scale pattern..are not to be used for pressure of a tropical system.

So lets look at the surroundings around this system currently.

First thing we are going to look at is the dry air that is still being ingested by this system. This is one reason why development of this will be a little slower.

Second, as of 3 Z we are dealing with about 10-20 knots of wind shear. There is an upper level anti cyclone near by but this shear is still effecting 97 L.

The vorticity is still stretched out and elongated..

However, convergence and divergence at the present time is decent across the system.

We do NOT think that these conditions are going to prevent this from developing. However..we do think that this will cause development to be slower.

Current thinking really has not changed from what we stated earlier in the afternoon on our facebook R.W.S page and that is we think that this may take until Monday to become a tropical cyclone.

Keep in mind that a tropical cyclone going across cuba and or Hispanola can weaken the system or even destroy it. However..guidance does not suggest this happening. Rather the thinking is that it will remain pretty weak until it crosses these locations. The weaker the system is going across the islands the less effect it would have as long as the COC remains intact.

We are not changing any thought behind this map that once again was created on the 18th of August.