Last 4 GFS Tracks for Atlantic Hurricanes

UPDATE: We have issued a forecast map showing the general movement of the three systems:

UPDATE:In a video on AccuWeather.com, Joe Bastardi warns that we shouldn't dismiss the small wave that could end up the in Gulf this week, and finds an interesting comparison of temperatures in the East before Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

There's been much ado about the long-range GFS predictions of hurricanes hitting the Atlantic Coast next week. It's way too far out to take the landfall forecasts seriously, but the point is that there will be storms to worry about this weekend and next week.

Earlier this week, there were predictions of a Chesapeake or New York City hit by one of these storms, which was traded for a southern route yesterday but then reared its ugly head again last night. Here's a look at the last 4 runs of the GFS's landfall predictions (first is most recent, last night's 06Z run) and the (very) approximate tracks that the major storm is taking. NOTE: This is NOT Tropical Depression #2, it's the storm behind it that just emerged from Africa overnight. The GFS doesn't do much with TD #2 now.

Notice how a small change in the track can land the storm anywhere on the East Coast (and maybe in the Gulf or Canada). There's also still plenty of time for the storms to veer out to sea (something some meteorlogists will say the GFS does frequently as time passes). As I've said before, this is because hurricanes get caught in the cogs in-between low and high pressure systems and it's like Price is Right's Plinko trying to figure out where they will eventually go. (And that's not even considering meteorological factors that the model could be getting wrong, which could rapidly increase or decrease the storm's strength, as well as the effects of the storm travelling over high mountains on the islands!)

The last two runs also have a second storm: