It may partly be a function of a different part of the eye being exposed, but it appears that Flo has taken a big step to the West over the past few hours.
The whole NE half of the storm looks quite healthy, especially in the last few frames. if shear lets up somewhat, I don't see why it wouldn't restrengthen somewhat to a legit cat 3.
Bad news for Wilmington. It's quite plausible that Wilmington could get the RFQ, and at a trajectory perpendicular to the coast. It's too early to speculate on exact landfall of course, but earlier I really thought Wilmington had dodged a bullet.
Are there any mechanisms which might cause the precip shield to eventually get displaced from the center like what happened with Mathew? I remember that not being modeled well at all, but it kept shifting more inland.
There's swath of 20-30" of rain near the coast on the GFS. The Euro and UKMET had totals over 40" . The freshwater flooding alone is going to be worse than Mathew somewhere.
It comes down to timing and rates. Without both I'm not optimistic. But the high end potential of 6-10" would be epic. I love low probability events when they work out.
It's good to see some decent snow with the deform band on the HRRR. Hours and hours of +/- 40 degree rain has been thoroughly depressing. If this storm were in January we would have probably had an epic sleet storm.