Hurricane Bill Heading for a 4...

Hurricane Bill certainly looks like a classic major storm on satellite loops tonight and that was confirmed by a recon flight into it tonight. NHC says top sfc winds are 125 and they're forecasting Bill to increase to 140+ mph as he heads near Bermuda late Friday night. Again I'm liking what I see in the upper steering patterns this hurricane season. East coast troughs keep reforming and, if that continues for another 3-4 weeks, that should recurve those powerful long track storms that come from out in the Atlantic. By late September the westerlies should be dropping back farther to the south steering away any late season storms. My gut tells me IF we are to have a threat this year, it'll be like Claudette...something forming in the Gulf along an old frontal boundary. Usually those aren't as powerful, but they can be...like Alicia in 1983.

In the short term, we are stuck in a very tropical air mass that has little horizontal movement of storms resulting in heavy downpours that cause some street flooding. VIPIR brings another front thru by early Sat. morning giving us a dry weekend...but that means we'll have a front to watch down over the warm waters of the Gulf.