On Friday morning, Elsa was upgraded to the first hurricane of the season, just as it was passing over Barbados. A hurricane watch is now in effect for Haiti, and a tropical storm watch for Jamaica, among closer, more immediate locations in the Lesser Antilles.
This short satellite loop shows the impressive structure since sunrise, and I have a couple radar loops available at http://bmcnoldy.rsmas.miami.edu/tropics/radar/
It is forecast to continue moving quickly to the west-northwest, reaching the Haiti area on Saturday, then Cuba on Sunday. The forecast gets extremely challenging then, as the models diverge greatly on both track and intensity. The extent of interaction with Haiti and Cuba is what drives most of the spread. But leading up to then, some models, like the European global model, actually dissipate it, while the HWRF regional hurricane model brings it just to Category 3 hurricane intensity. Somewhere in between is the most likely, and that is what the NHC forecast represents.
For interests in the U.S. mainland, the first area of concern is south Florida. IF Elsa should maintain itself as a tropical storm or hurricane and it tracks toward Florida, impacts would begin midday Monday, with a closest approach late Monday night into Tuesday morning. Model guidance overwhelmingly shows it at tropical storm intensity at that point.
If it passes west of the Florida peninsula as the majority of models show, it would have some extra time over the eastern Gulf of Mexico and would likely make landfall anywhere from Naples (Tuesday morning) up to the panhandle (midday Wednesday).
Elsa is the earliest first hurricane formation since Chris in 2012. I exclude Alex in January 2016 because I am a firm believer that it was meteorologically a remnant of the 2015 season. There's not a strong trend to earlier dates, but a weak one is beginning to show up over these five decades.
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