Yeah its in no way a prediction but rather a look at what similar storms did, but we know that further SW means more chance to miss troughs, which means more west etc so it all makes sense...... would love to know which 11 hit the US....to see what the setup was like to see if there was something that stood out....so out of the above sample almost half hit the US....
Keep in mind that there has yet to be any south of due west motion since TC genesis. So, that actually occurring during the next 12-18 hours remains to be seen. The modeling I've seen is due west or just N of due west. So, it is possible. In case it does, I have my own list as of 2011 because I did my own research on WSW motion in the E ATL 10+ years ago:
From my 8/31/11 analysis:
"Looking back all the way to 1851, I found only 30 TS+'s that showed some WSW motion during their early lives in the eastern Atlantic (including just during TD stage), indicative of pretty strong E ATL sfc high pressure to the north. Here are some stats:
1) Out of these 30, 12 (40%) hit the US (all but Carol of 1953 hit as a hurricane..Carol was a grazer), which is 2.4 times the 1 in 6 chance for ALL Cape Verde type storms since 1960 (w/# days African coast to US)(all but Able and Fran were cat 4+ at strongest):
- #6 of 1893 (GA/SC) (14)
- #4 of 1928 (FL)(11)
- #4 of 1947 (FL, LA) (14)
- Able of 1952 (SC) (13)
- Carol of 1953 (ME grazed) (11)
- Donna of 1960 (FL, NC, New England) (12)
- Dora of 1964 (FL) (13)
- Allen of 1980 (TX) (12)
- Hugo of 1989 (SC) (12)
- Fran of 1996 (NC) (14)
- Isabel of 2003 (NC) (15)
- Ivan of 2004 (AL/FL) (16)
The 18 that didn't hit the US (cat 4+ at strongest only Gabrielle, Luis, Dean, Bill, and Igor):
- #2 of 1927
- Charlie of 1950
- Dog of 1951
- Fox of 1951
- Carol of 1965
- Anna of 1969
- Christine 1973
- Earl 1980
- Gabrielle 1989
- Fran of 1990
- Danny of 1991
- Luis of 1995
- Gustav of 1996
- Ivan of 1998
- Dean of 2007
- Bill of 2009
- Fred of 2009
- Igor of 2010"
To update my 2011 analysis, I just checked for WSW movers during 2011-20 and found one: Helene of 2018. It didn't hit the US:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-at-2018.png
So, if I add that to my previous analysis, I now have 12 hitting the US and 19 not. That is still a pretty high 39% US hit rate, much higher than that for all eastern Atlantic storms. Also, if I were to ignore those that occurred during El Nino since we're not in one, the % is even higher.
