No major changes to the forecast for Marco and Laura this morning. Marco has weakened some overnight and will continue to do so on its approach to a Louisiana landfall tonight or early Tuesday.
Laura is moving just south of Cuba this morning and is nearing hurricane strength. The forecast is for it to move west-northwest remaining just south of the island, slowly strengthening before entering the Gulf early Tuesday. From Tuesday on it is forecast to strengthen steadily and make landfall near the Texas/Louisiana border late Wednesday or early Thursday as a strong category 2 hurricane. There is still some spread on the track and intensity guidance. It looks like the general track has consolidated fairly well and I wouldn't expect any major shifts, keeping in mind the cone is still wide at the landfall point. The intensity forecast is from a blend of models so you can think of it as sort of an average. What is concerning is that the HWRF, which is a high resolution hurricane specific model, has been consistently showing Laura becoming a very strong hurricane as it approaches landfall. This model can have a bias that over-strengthens storms in certain situations but it accurately predicted Michael and Dorian and has handled Marco well also. Because of this consistency it is becoming hard to ignore and I still think we'll see the intensity forecast increase some in the coming days. It is possible that the HWRF is wrong which would be good news for those in the path of Laura, we'll just have to wait and see.
That's it for this morning. The rest of the Tropical Atlantic is quiet for now but a tropical wave will come off the coast of Africa later this week that we'll need to keep an eye on as we end the month. It looks like it will be a rainy week along a lot of the Gulf Coast whether we're in the path of one of these storms or not. Have a great week.
Chris
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