As of 5pm Friday, Tropical Depression Nine was located a little over 400 miles ESE of Jamaica. The system is still battling of bit of northeasterly wind shear, but it’ll be moving into an environment much more conducive for organization this weekend. It could become a named storm at any time.

As this moves further to the west, it reaches an area with enormous tropical heat potential. Very deep, warm water will undoubtedly lead to straightening. In all likelihood this becomes a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday south of Cuba, and approaches Florida Tuesday into Wednesday. We must stress, it’s not out of the question that this becomes a major hurricane (category 3+) during that time.

With respect to track, although we’ve been able to narrow it down to a general path toward Florida, it’s important to remember that the cone is still very wide at day 5 (about 400 miles). A track up the left hand side of the cone vs the right hand side means drastically different impacts for any given location. So, while it is still too early to nail down the specific timing/location of impacts, folks anywhere along the Florida peninsula need to be in the early stages of their prep. This means it’s time to review your plan and take an inventory of your supplies should you need to start taking action early next week.

Afternoon model guidance is still a bit split beyond the next 2-3 days. The latest Euro hints at a southwest Florida landfall while the GFS is further north into the Big Bend. Again, these are two drastically different outcomes when it comes to impacts. As data collection continues and the storm develops a bit more, models will come into better agreement. So, just as we know a lot more now than we did yesterday or the day before, we’ll know a lot more over the weekend.

The area of disturbed weather that we’ve been tracking for several days has now become Tropical Depression 9 – so we now have a track from the National Hurricane Center. There are still a lot of details to be ironed out though.

Here’s what we know right now…

Expect this to become a named storm at any time. Strengthening will take place over the weekend as it moves west-northwest. Odds are it will become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday, with additional strengthening early next week. There is a lot of tropical heat potential (fuel for storms) in the western Caribbean and southeastern Gulf.

We’ve gotten some better model agreement since Thursday evening that Florida is the likely destination for this storm. It is important to remember though, the cone is about 200 miles wide at day 5. A track up the left hand side of the cone vs the right hand side mean drastically different impacts for any given location. So, while it is still too early to nail that down, folks anywhere along the Florida peninsula need to be in the early stages of their prep. Meaning it’s time to review your plan and take an inventory of your supplies should you need to take action early next week.

We’ll have some fresh model data to go over this afternoon, and I’ll post another blog entry after the 5pm advisory comes in from the National Hurricane Center.