Going up the west coast of FL seems improbable to me, too. Historical data doesn’t support it. That doesn’t make it impossible but it does make for a certain level of incredulity.
There is an old one that runs this path. It’s a cycle kind of thing. I’m not certain how long this one can keep west. Dirtboy put up a perfect graphic on the upper level.
Not to far back.
Why is it improbable? It is until it happens, as they say. This hurricane has shown a turn to the north for days from dozens of models that are run multiple times a day - so that amounts to many hundreds of model runs showing the same thing. The likelihood that they are all wrong is small, very small.
The only question was when the storm turns north, and it is a bit more westerly than first thought. Not bad considering the storm is the size of France and hurricane force winds (at least gusts) will touch almost the entire state.