Tropical Storm Ernesto Wobbles South; Gulf of Mexico Not At Risk

Overnight, Tropical Storm Ernesto took an unanticipated jump to the south, and this was the nail in the coffin for a system that is going up against harsh, dry air.

The National Hurricane Center is predicting a westward movement of Ernesto before taking a northwest turn and crashing into the Yucatan Peninsula. After landfall, Ernesto is anticipated to strengthen into a hurricane before landfalling in Texas. But what do other models say to that?

The latest 18z model suite suggests that Ernesto will follow the NHC track mentioned above and landfall into the Yucatan Peninsula and then Mexico. There is another agreement between a few models, where Ernesto remains too weak to go northwest and crashes into Central America before being spit out into the Eastern Pacific.

Analogs from hurricanes in similar situations as Ernesto indicate that a dying of the system occurred with the majority of models that hit the lower half of the Yucatan Peninsula. This does not bode well for Ernesto, which is already a mess at the moment, judging by satellite imagery below.

Andrew