LarryWx wrote:
Based on history, what happens between now and 48 W may tell me a lot. IF it becomes a trop. cyclone east of 48 W and IF it has any NW movement east of 48 W, that would be a very strong indication to me that it will never hit the lower 48. Here's why I'm saying this:
There is not a single storm on record since 1851 that moved at 315 degrees or higher (i.e., true NW included) between any two official data points east of 48 W (even for just a very short time) and later hit the contiguous U.S. Basically, climo is saying to me that over recorded history there basically has never been enough high pressure (strong enough and/or long enough) to the north to bring any storm far enough west to hit the contiguous U.S. when there was weak enough pressure to the north prior to that that allowed any NW movement east of 48W.Since 1851, for storms that did had any 315+ degree movement east of 48 W, the furthest west/closest to the U.S. any one got was Gladys of 1975 (73W/~300 miles from NC). The second closest was Irene of 2005 (70.2W/~400 miles from NC).
Gladys of 1975 track link:
http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlant...LADYS/track.gif
I'm not sure what your point is, Larry, but you don't have to look all the way back to before 1851 to find a TS that tracked NW east of 48W, just back to 2004 with Lisa. Lisa tracked at 343 degrees from about 44-45 degrees longitude.
http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2004/LISA/track.gif
But that's irrelevant. If 91L tracked toward 288 degrees from its current location it would miss the Caribbean. That's just barely WNW. So it could very easily pass north of the Caribbean and head out to sea. I'm not saying it will do that (head out to sea), but it's quite possible and certainly not unprecedented from the current location.