NO MAJOR CHANGES FOR CATEGORY TWO HURRICANE BILL

This will be kind of short since there are no earth-shattering changes in the forecast for Bill. Top winds are now 100 mph and are expected to easily go higher and make Bill a solid category three hurricane. It is interesting too that the NHC mentions the fact that computer models suggest that Bill will grow in size as well- covering more ocean. That should be amazing to see- hopefully not at the expense of it hitting land somewhere.

So what about that? Where is Bill headed? The NHC continues to project a track more to the north over time as a break in the large ridge of high pressure over the Atlantic allows Bill to slip in- like water finding its way in to a crack in a large rock. From there, it is possible that Bill could turn east of north and never affect land or it could turn too late and clip Bermuda, the East Coast of the U.S. and/or the

Canadian Maritimes. None of the models are really reliable enough to project that far in to the future to determine where Bill will end up. I will say this, if it makes it past 70 west longitude, then it would have to turn east of north to miss the East Coast of the U.S.- right now, the 5 day plot is 68.5 or 1.5 degrees east of that essential spot (in my mind). So as you can see, every degree west that this thing tracks is critical down the road. Folks in Bermuda, the U.S. East Coast and particularly the Canadian Maritimes should stay on top of this. I am sure you would even without me saying so- but this is an August hurricane with potential to deal quite a punch should it hit land. We'll know more tomorrow.

• Track hurricane Bill on our tracking maps
• Colleague Mike Watkins' blog
• HurricaneTrack News/Talk Info and Archive
• Commentary archive for 2009

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