It looks like the storm has turned northwest. It will absolutely ravage the Florida Keys. I can hardly believe that there are a lot of people - including older people - who decided to shelter at Key West. I hope that their building is OK. Who on Earth would decide to stay in that place ... what were they thinking??

Irma will be over warmer Gulf of Mexico waters - which will allow it to strengthen again. This is super BAD news for Tampa Bay, and all the towns on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The most recent path is highly destructive for low-lying areas of Naples and Fort Myers.

AKSAR - big thanks. I will take a look at those Web pages. It seems like Irma is such a big storm, that the computer models are not capturing its true inertia (i.e. its momentum and its angular momentum). It is just not possible for an enormous hurricane to "turn on a dime" - which is what the original models predicted. But I think your point is absolutely correct - they would have to run enormous computer models to capture the whole weather system.

There is a very good argument that NOAA needs better and bigger supercomputers.

UPDATE NEWS / Sunday 10 Sep
A very dangerous day is unfolding in the Florida Keys and much of West Florida,” Michael Brennan, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said in an early morning update Sunday. “It certainly could inundate the entire island. That’s why everyone in the Keys was urged so strongly to evacuate.”