The above forecast map is quite accurate most times with slight changes as storm gets closer. When Ike was headed for South Texas last year, this forecast map had it headed straight for Houston.
NOAA’s going to be watching this like a hawk and will dive in at the first sustained wind speed of 39; they know they need to name a storm before the 15th of Aug or they will be forced to furlough half the crew.
Amazing how accurate some long-range forecasts can be.
I’m quite positive there are plenty of eyes on TD2 and the other system coming off of Africa.
Why do I get the feeling things are going to get busy now??
ECMWF is really off now. It has the storms tracking much more rapidly than reality. The fact that it had Ike headed right for Houston last year was luck of the draw more than anything else. If you look at the track it is predicting today, you’ll see it still is predicting much too rapid forward motion, and recurving northeast so rapidly it won’t come within 700NM of the US, and the closest approach would probably be around NYC or Boston.