The official forecast has remained pretty steady, and has done really well -- the strong competing forces of extremely warm ocean water and lots of land interaction have kept it intact but not able to intensify much. Rainbands are already spreading across south Florida, and will continue to do through Tuesday. This radar loop and several others can be found at http://bmcnoldy.rsmas.miami.edu/tropics/radar/.
Not surprisingly, the wind is not a huge concern with a tropical storm, but the storm surge could get rather bad (up to 5 feet?) in the Big Bend and Tampa Bay areas because they are so geographically vulnerable to surge. Since it's still moving at a decent speed, the rainfall shouldn't be too bad... some areas will experience flooding (particularly in the western Florida peninsula), but generally under six inches is expected. It is forecast to decay over land as it tracks over Georgia, the Carolinas, and up the northeast coastline over the next 4-5 days.
As I eluded to earlier, the track and intensity forecasts so far have been exceptional, with errors well below the NHC's own average over the past five years at nearly every lead time. These plots show each individual NHC forecast (colored lines) as well as the observed position/intensity (black line).
Elsewhere across the basin, no new activity is expected in at least the next several days. But through today, the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) is an impressive 352% of average for the date, using the past fifty years as the baseline. A handful of other years were that active so early in the season, most recently 2012, 1968, and 1966. For reference, 2020 was only about 2/3 of where 2021 is at.
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