We are in St Martin now and enduring the trailing edge of ERIKA as she heads towards the Virgin Islands. For those of you that have missed them, here is a link to latest Vlog Updates from 'Sophisticated Lady' as we were wrapping up our season in BVIs and then set sail for SXM.. the updates include storm preparation in the area as DANNY approached earlier in the week, and now today as ERIKA is blowing through... Batten down, and hope all are ok!

"Sophisticated Lady' Update Logs for BVI and SXM w/TS ERIKA

And our webcam is still working at the link below

Amazing how quickly Erika collapsed into nothing as it crossed from Hispaniola and went over Cuba. We were expecting the eye to hit Tampa today (Monday) and instead we're just getting some heavy rains, from residual moisture in the air, and very little wind.

Been following the comments regarding Hurricanes in the several posts discussing them with some interest.

I somewhat agree with some of the bashing of the various agencies regarding tracks/forecasts. Lives are at stake so, they need to be accurate.

OTH, Hurricane forecasting is notoriously difficult. That the models predict tracks that are anywhere close to accurate most of the time is pretty encouraging and the agencies that provide this service should be given their due.

The subscription service I follow (Crown) was awfully good in describing the difficulties that Erika presented. After the storm left the Lesser Antilles and entered the Caribbean waters, I had no doubt that every model had problems and Crown was very good in describing them and the impact the various weather features present in the Atlantic and Caribbean waters as well as all of North America were having or might have on the storm.

Anyway, as someone stated in one of the threads on this topic, weather forecasting is the only job where you can be wrong 80% of the time and still have a job. It's tough duty. The important thing to do with all this weather information is use it to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.

I've been reading Crown Weather Service as well. I enjoy the read and the details on how much the different models disagree and his interpretation of all the factors that strengthen/weaken the storms. Jeff Masters at wunderground.com does a bit of this too. But, its rather inside baseball and more theoretical than practical.

What I did get out of the dialogues were the factors that predicted a weakening Erika. Sure enough, Erika fell apart.

Cheers, RickG