Eventual track of Hurricane Dennis to determine extended forecast for Wisconsin

Hurricane Dennis has been strengthening in the Caribbean Sea and is now nearing the southeastern tip of Cuba. It's brought some torrential rainfall and high winds to Jamaica, but the eyewall remained out to sea, sparing Jamaica the worst. I haven't heard reports yet from Jamaica, but I'd guess there will be some flooding and major damage to parts of the northern coast of the island.


Visible satellite imagery of Dennis as an eye started to become visible at 9:45am. The images are available at the National Hurricane Center website.




Visible image from 3:45pm this afternoon. The eye is cloud-filled, but the overall structure of the storm has improved from this morning, at this point now classified as a major category three storm with top sustained winds of 115 mph.




The National Hurricane Center 5-day forecast for Dennis. Forecasting the track of tropical cyclones is notoriously difficult. Interactions with land (such as will occur soon when Dennis makes landfall on Cuba) can decrease the intensity and cause unpredictable changes in the track.

Dennis' connection to the weather in Wisconsin:
The medium range computer forecast models have not agreed on a solution, but it appears that a farther eastward track of the remnants of Dennis next week toward eastern Virginia (as a model run this morning showed) would pull in cooler air from the north into Wisconsin, giving us another nice break from the heat.
On the other hand, if the remnants of Dennis stall in Kentucky and southern Indiana, as a model run this afternoon showed, any penetration of cooler air into Wisconsin from the north would be blocked and the hot weather that is expected to develop later this weekend would continue.
It appears that in either case, there's an above average shot at more hot weather by about a week from Saturday, Jul. 16th, possibly a heat wave developing.