A Favorable Shift...For Now...
Since last night a favorable shift in the official Hurricane Center track has occurred...that shift puts the projected path of Irene through far Western New England. If this track holds then the worst of the storm would avoid Eastern and Central MA...Connecticut would get hit the hardest.
Even though this has been a positive development please remember that Irene is still 3 days away and more shifting and trends will present themselves in fact, my thinking right now is that the track will start to shift back east a touch and still take a similar path to Gloria.
Watch my forecast:
Historically speaking storms start to curl to the east at this latitude and there is a chance that the strong Atlantic ridge that is guiding Irene almost due north up the East Coast will start to breakdown a bit and the slower moving Irene will be able to take advantage of that and shift a bit to the east. Certainly something to keep an eye and monitor...thus this remains a very fluid situation.
One thing is almost certain...Irene will not be a miss, meaning it's not going out to sea and that alone makes this extremely dangerous. She will be a hit...just how bad and where is still up in the air. So even though we are a day closer we still need to prepare for anything from a tropical storm to a Cat 2 hurricane.