“The center of Oscar has continued to move over eastern Cuba overnight. Although radar imagery from Guantanamo Bay has shown a continued degradation of Oscar’s inner core, bands of deep convection with heavy rainfall remain over portions of the island. A couple of ASCAT passes from earlier in the night showed that tropical-storm-force winds were occurring along both the southern and northern coasts of eastern Cuba. Given the decrease in inner core organization over the past several hours, the initial wind speed has lowered perhaps conservatively to 45 kt for this advisory.”

“Radar and surface observations from Guantanamo Bay indicate that the center is located just north of that location. The initial motion estimate is a somewhat uncertain 270/2 kt. The storm should begin to turn northwestward and northward later today ahead of a shortwave trough moving over the northwestern Bahamas. Some of the dynamical model guidance suggests that the center may re-form near the northern coast of Cuba later today, rather than the low-level center continuously tracking across the mountainous terrain of the island. Regardless of the details of the track over eastern Cuba, Oscar is expected to emerge off the northern coast of Cuba later today or tonight.”

“Thereafter, the cyclone should accelerate northeastward over portions of the southeastern Bahamas and western Atlantic ahead of the aforementioned trough. In 60-72 hours, global model guidance indicates that the circulation will become elongated and that it will be absorbed by a larger developing non-tropical area of low pressure between Bermuda and the southeastern US coast by day 3. The track guidance is again faster this cycle, and the NHC forecast has been adjusted accordingly,” says a National Hurricane Center bulletin on Tropical Storm Oscar.