I meant by "weak" a touch of sarcasm (having ridden through a couple of CAT 1s by accident). Sorry about that.
The latest NHC SWAG would seem to guess that this will be a Hatteras-brusher, which I had suspected given that Isabel formed so far north (where I experienced my first CAT 1- not MY idea; the grownups refused to move until we were ordered into the local shelter). Isabel could fake everyone out again...
The models suggest wide unpredictability about Isabel. See
http://www.wrel.com/modelmap.htm for the latest guesses of some of the models. If you believe one of them, Florida is not out of the woods yet... and if you believe the rightmost one will slide further to the right, those members of the elistist board blown halfway away by Fabian may be in for a rude resurprise.
a watchful 'bump' from Virginia.
The models suggest wide unpredictability about Isabel. See http://www.wrel.com/modelmap.htm for the latest guesses of some of the models. If you believe one of them, Florida is not out of the woods yet... and if you believe the rightmost one will slide further to the right, those members of the elistist board blown halfway away by Fabian may be in for a rude resurprise.
Actually, the models are unusually close together for a storm this far out. Much less unpredictability than usual.
And there's a real problem with people who don't really know anything about any of the models simply looking at maps with colored lines.
The only models pointing at Florida are the completely useless ones.
BAMM is the Beta-and-Advection Model, MEDIUM Layer. It's designed for BADLY SHEARED weak tropical storms. It's useless for Hurricanes. It only shows the low and medium level steering flow.
And the A98E is the oldest and most useless model that is still run. It incorporates a lot of climo (based on history of previous storms, rather than current weather conditions.
In Andrew, the Climo models showed Andrew curving harmlessly out to sea. The Dynamical models showed Andrew hitting Florida five days before it did.
As Avila noted in the latest discussion, there are no global dynamical models getting Isabel anywhere near Florida.
I live on Long Island and am watching very closely! Thanks for the updates.