Tropical Storm Emily Track Edging Away From Florida

Forecasters continue to push Tropical Storm Emily’s path into the Atlantic Ocean and away from Florida.

If the National Hurricane Center’s forecast track holds or continues the eastward trend, all the storm will mean for West Central Florida is a brief drying out of our weather.

The state’s west coast, including the Tampa Bay area, is out of the hurricane center’s forecast cone for Emily, and the center’s updates have tended to push the storm’s path east with each new advisory.

Now, forecasters expect Emily to pass off the state’s east coast by the weekend and move parallel to the nation’s coast but well out to sea.

There still is a small chance tropical storm winds will reach the Tampa Bay area. Hurricane center forecasters put that possibility in the 10 percent to 20 percent range.

The best chance for that to happen would be during the weekend when Emily is forecast to be moving off the Florida coast.

That path would put West Central Florida on the storm’s western, or dry, side and cut rain chances for most of the region. That will just reinforce some dry air already in place.

Rain chances will be slightly higher south of Pasco County, but everyone looks to be in for another few days of blazing sun and wicked heat index temperatures around 105 degrees.

That’s if Emily doesn’t make its expected turn to the north as soon as forecasters believe. That would push the storm farther west and possibly closer to this area.

But updates every six hours from the hurricane center since Tuesday have generally kept Emily on the path that would take it away from the state, with each new forecast nudging the track farther east.

By Saturday, when forecasts call for Emily to be off the Florida coast and about even with the Tampa Bay area, the storm should have winds just below 70 mph.

But winds topping 50 mph would extend less than 25 miles west of its center and winds of 35 mph would go out fewer than 70 miles to the west.

Forecasters do expect Emily to become the season’s first hurricane but it should be well offshore and near the Carolinas when that happens.

The intensity forecast models keep Emily as a tropical storm, even after passing over the mountains of Hispaniola on Thursday, though a few have it almost disappearing.

They are fairly unified on the storm hitting hurricane strength and a few models, the same ones a day ago predicting robust growth of Emily, have it reaching Category 3 strength.

Forecasters have the storm hitting about 80 mph by Monday.