Irma and Florida: Confidence in the hurricane’s forecast track is growing

Enlarge / Thursday, 12z European model operational run; forecast for Sunday morning at 8am ET. (credit: Tropical Tidbits)

Hurricane Irma continues to move west-northwest toward the Straits of Florida at a good clip, about 16mph. At this rate, the storm remains only about 60 to 72 hours from reaching the southern Florida coast, if it indeed makes landfall there. The National Hurricane Center's updated track forecast for the storm as of 11am ET is shown below.

The gallery below provides information about the last 10 track forecasts from the National Hurricane Center (they are updated every six hours), going back to the morning of Tuesday, September 5. At that time, the professional forecasters at the Miami-based hurricane center had the storm moving into the Florida Keys, between Southern Florida and Cuba, early on Sunday morning.

As we get closer to this weekend, the logical question becomes "how much can we trust these track forecasts?"

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