140 MPH HURRICANE MATTHEW WEST BOUND AT 3 MPH... Forecast to Turn Soon But HASNT Yet.. Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti in Play Now... Florida NOT Out of It.. NC Looks South At Matthew & Remembers Hazel

Hate to say it but the media is singing Hazel again.

Time will tell, much can change.

Though reality is MATTHEW is moving WEST

As I said last night and this morning.

It has not made the turn.

It is going with the slower models.

Read my blog days back for details.

Slow was further West.

Slow brought Carolinas in play and beyond.

And cannot rule out Florida impacts.

As the pretty, Panther Blue color pushes West..

To the NNE of Matthew.

Matthew responds by moving West.

Yes the front is digging down into the GOM.

But Matthew remains far to the South moving W at 3.

Every time the eye contracts know it is going thru a cycle.

Blow that up and as I have been saying West.

Sometimes an eye wobble looks NW or SW

The general movement is West to WNW.

It is forecast to begin to move more Northerly.

Forecast.......

Dealing with reality is not always easy not for people and not when there is a Major Hurricane to the South of you. In truth the models have been bad in the short term handling Matthew in both intensity forecasting and track. Earlier there were options that showed Matthew not crawling across the North coast of South America yet it did just that. There were shear models that insisted the shear would hold it in check and the models that showed a Cat 4 were thought to be wrong. The models, a few of them, were right and it became a Category 5 briefly before maintaining a Cat 4 status for days. Oh and not in the hottest water with land interaction from South America it maintained Cat 4 status. That's the reality. Long term it will go out to sea... ALMOST ALL HURRICANES GO OUT TO SEA... unless they rain themselves out over Canada as a few do.

So for a while get real and stop watching the models and watch Matthew spin. Watch Matthew's actual movement rather than it's forecast movement. Also understand that the strong Major Hurricane winds are in a tight band around the eye of the hurricane. The cloud mass takes up half the Caribbean it seems at times, yet the real hurricane force winds are a narrow tight band around a small tight eye. A powerful eye wall circles that eye and the storm surge pushed out away from the storm towards land will be high wherever it hits and often just to the right of where the eye makes landfall.

I'm going out to buy some produce for the High Holidays which begin tonight. I've baked while I looped but at some point I need produce. And I'm going to update this blog around 2 PM while watching the Carolina Panthers game. That's my game plan today so you know when to check back. You are beginning to hear the Hazel song again on TWC and other media outlets. That means the long term impacts are going up for the Carolinas. Florida is not out of it. For now this is Cuba's hurricane and Haiti gets the strong right side.

Again wind probabilities show the trend.

They go up now as far North as Ocean City, Maryland.

The numbers are highest from Miami to OBX

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIAPWSAT4+shtml/021455.shtml?

When they are sure it's not going to pull to the West more..

...they will take Tampa out of the probs.

Note Tampa is still in the wind probs.

Not over til it's over and has pulled North ..

..and stayed East of Florida.

Matthew is Matthew not Hazel.

But this is the track they are showing on air often.

Outlined the coast of Florida...

...then veered inland 

One day we will look back at Matthew's track.

In theory the name Matthew will be retired.

Would take a miracle for a low death toll in it's path.

We can pray... we can hope.

But reality bites.

The real hurricane winds are in the eye...

...and the eye wall, remember that.

The bigger picture is huge.

What we call the cloud pattern.

The envelope is huge.

NRL map grid showing wind potential

And showing where impacts can be...

..as well as a possible track.

Please don't get lost in the models.

The models have not done a great job.

They are so so and the NHC is having a hard time.

They insisted at 11 PM it was going NNW at 7 MPH

12 hours later it is still going West at 3.

Looking for that forecast turn...

Matthew is pretty much at 75 West.

Each degree West brings more problems for Jamaica.

And more of Cuba in it's path..

And makes it need to take a stronger turn right to avoid the US.

I do think it's probably going to move WNW soon.

I hope... not a scientific fact.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

PS Again this is NOT Hazel but MATTHEW

But here's a look back at Hazel old school style.