Tracks Widen for Helene

Helene is not being treated as kindly by the computer models as Gordon or even Florence. During the past couple of days, the Model Spread [JessePedia] has begun to widen (forecasts to 96 hours shown below; those are the Caribbean islands in the lower left). Today the models are about split, with four sure she's going on a more westward track, four sure she's going northwest, and most in the middle.

Of course, this time last year, we were talking about Tropical Depression #17, so the fact that we're only on #8 this year makes things not seem so bad.

Below is a graphic drawn by AccuWeather artists showing Helene's possible tracks during the next 5 to 7 days. Track #1 indicates that she'll follow Gordon's track, which seems less and less likely all the time. The second track shows her approaching Bermuda but turning east of the island, a solution which is supported by the AccuWeather.com forecast (archived map) as well as the U.S. National Hurricane Center track (archived map) at 5 PM today. The third possibility is that her northward turn will be delayed and she could be approaching the Southeast United States coast at the end of next week.