A Quick Look at Hurricane Dorian at 7:45 p.m.

We won’t have a new advisory on Dorian until 10 p.m., but here are a few notes.

The NOAA WP-3D Orion nicknamed Kermit just flew its first pass through the center of Hurricane Dorian. The plane’s crew found the center at 22.8N, 68.0W. This is about 220 miles east northeast of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The peak flight-level wind so far has been 90 mph. The SFMR estimated surface winds of 90 mph. The central pressure was 979 millibars. So the hurricane is stronger.

The Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters plane reported a central pressure of 980 mb and an SFMR measured surface wind of 91 mph just before 7 p.m.

1-minute satellite imagery indicates that the convection around the center of Dorian is increasing. Cloud temps near the center are becoming colder and the central dense overcast seems to be increasing in size. Another burst of deep convection was forming on the western side of the eyewall at this hour.

There appears to be decent anticyclonic outflow around over the storm, another factor favoring intensification.

The hurricane is over warm water and wind shear is light. There has been a bit of an upper level-low over the southern Bahamas and Cuba, but the hurricane will increasingly put distance between it and the low, and that bit of shear will relax.

The official forecast is shifted a little further to the south, but it is too early to pinpoint where the greatest impacts will be. But it appears the center will impact the Florida Peninsula starting Sunday evening, with landfall coming late Monday. There is increasing agreement between the global models.

The European ensemble mean (black line) carries the hurricane to the north of West Palm Beach before turning it northward along the east coast of Florida before turning northeast and paralleling the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

The GFS ensemble mean (black line) takes it inland a little further north, across the entire Peninsula, emerges it briefly into the Gulf and then turns it sharply northeastward to near Savannah.

It is too early to know what the specific impacts will be, but everyone along the coast from the Outer Banks to the Florida Keys needs to be monitoring the storm. A state of emergency has been declared for the state of Florida.

Six hourly upper air balloon releases are now being done by offices across the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. The 0z model run tonight will be enhanced with data from the NOAA G-IV recon flight.

Dorian has claimed its first college football game schedule change: the FSU/Boise State game on Saturday in Jacksonville has been moved to Tallahassee.

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