Richie

It feels like Monday morning quarterbacking to say that that was never a possibility. The storm was designated as an invest on October 4, named on October 5, and landfall was projected to be four days later. Evacuations plans and general preparations needed to be made almost immediately. The rare trajectory of this storm and the favorable conditions for development merited an overly cautious approach because the worst-case scenario was at one time relatively plausible. A metropolitan area as large as Tampa Bay can't afford to wait until there is clear model consensus.

But for much of its lifecycle, it plausibly could have gone north of TB and didn't have to weaken upon landfall. So what is the point of making calls like that well ahead of when they can't definitively be made?

This is an incredible number of tornado warnings for these areas.

There have been more than two. But this one is the largest as far as I'm aware. An EF2/EF3 in South Florida is as extreme as I can remember.

Incredible amounts of lightning accompanying the tornadoes in Port St. Lucie.

The histrionics without any substantive commentary isn't helpful.

I think it's beyond "hyperbolic flair" when you say that a category 3 is "quite likely" and "might even track as far south as Miami." As of the 1 PM intermediary update, Dade has been removed from even a tropical storm watch.

By just north of Miami you mean 75 miles to the north in Palm Beach County? Because neither Dade nor are Broward are in the cone.