Just a quick hit diary here to give folks a heads-up.
I’m not ashamed to admit when I’m wrong. I didn’t give Nate much chance of even making it to hurricane status, but recon just found hurricane force winds. Officially Nate is still a TS but I expect NHC may do a special advisory soon.
As expected, Nate was disrupted by his passage over Nicaragua and Honduras and spent the whole day today very slowly organizing over the exceptionally warm waters of the northwest Caribbean. Nate tracked somewhat east of his forecast track, thus avoiding land interaction with the Yucatan peninsula, and has now gone through the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf.
Over the past few hours, Nate has finally got his act together, formed strong convection over the center and is beginning to close off an eye wall. There is a substantial area of unstable air (high Theta-E) to his northwest and the warm waters of the loop current just to his northeast. Passing near both of those will likely lead to additional, possibly rapid, intensification.
The Hurricane Center forecasts landfall near the Mississippi/Alabama border as a strong category 1 (75 knots) but this looks conservative given reconnaissance data that came in shortly after that forecast. I’m now expecting a mid-strength category 2 at landfall.
Nate is still quite lopsided with most of the stronger winds to the east side, but he is developing a core which will likely be a closed eyewall by the morning.
Folks anywhere from the eastern portion of Louisiana’s coastline to the western half of the Florida Panhandle need to prepare for a possible direct impact.
Sorry for the lack of detail, but I just wanted to get a heads-up posted. I’ll try to do a more comprehensive diary mid to late morning tomorrow.