1. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts an area of disorganized thunderstorms to become better organized and form a center of circulation in the NW Caribbean Sea later today or tonight. The storm would likely be named Helene, and is forecast to track through the Yucatan Channel, then become a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.
2. The general thinking in the models is that this storm would track to the north, then possibly northeast, with a broad area, from the Florida Panhandle to the West Central Florida Coast, in the crosshairs.
3. This storm is forecast to intensify quite rapidly, with the NHC best-track forecast predicting max winds to reach 110 mph in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. This would place it near the threshold between cat 2 and cat 3 wind speeds.
4. Keep in mind that until a center of circulation develops, we should expect forecasts to have larger uncertainty than normal. Expect track changes to shift east and west, and intensity and timing forecasts to shift more than normal as well.
5. This storm is likely to produce a large wind field, especially east of the center of circulation. Large wind fields are a double-edge sword. On a positive note, they can slow down rapid intensification when conditions are prime for development. In other words, large hurricanes tend to intensify slower than small hurricanes, when surrounding environmental conditions are equal (besides the size). On a negative note, large hurricanes generate a broader wind field with more extensive wind impacts. They also push more storm surge flooding across longer stretches of coastline.
