She does look much better the last 4-6 hrs and the shear is obviously lower now, if a she can get her act together sooner rather than later the threat to the US goes up I think....
Jerry looks really bad, no new storms firing, his center looks elongated on early vis shots, he might be on his last leg and die much sooner than modeled.....most of the model runs that pull Karen NE rely on him being strong and Karen weak, I think the opposite is setting up and I would not be surprised to see minimal interaction at this point.....so then we just got to wait and see what Karen decides to do....
To your point the NHC seems to think she will strengthen also and a stronger more stacked system eventually means a westward movement and possible CONUS threat. Not sure what the GFS old and new, Ukie and HWRF are seeing that the Euro isn't
The initial motion is now northward or 360/06 kt.
Karen's forecast
track hinges heavily on the future intensity and associated vertical
structure of the cyclone. The GFS, GFS-Legacy, UKMET, and HRWF
dynamical models take a much weaker and more vertically shallow
cyclone northeastward after 48 hours and either continue with that
motion through day 5 or dissipate the system. In contrast, the ECMWF
and many of its stronger ensemble members stall Karen around days
3-4 and then turn the somewhat stronger and deeper cyclone westward
to west-southwestward to the south of a building ridge. Given that
Karen is forecast to be stronger and vertically deeper than the
weaker models, the current track forecast leans more toward the
stronger ECMWF and ECMWF-Ensemble model solutions. The new NHC
forecast is to the right of the previous advisory track and slower,
especially on days 3-5, but the new track does not extend as far
east as the weaker GFS, UKMET, and HWRF models or the consensus
models that incorporate those three models.
None of the dynamical models, including the HWRF and HMON hurricane
models, show much in the way of strengthening once Karen moves
north of Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands except for the ECMWF model,
despite the very low vertical wind shear conditions that the cyclone
will be moving into by 24 hours and beyond.
Given Karen's decent
wind field and vertical structure, the expected low shear
conditions, moist mid-level environment, and SSTs of more than 29
deg C for the next 48 hours or so, forecasting at least slow but
steady strengthening seems to be quite reasonable.
