10pm Tropical Update...

Dean continues to slowly organize this evening. There is some dry air arching from the west side of the system all of the way around to the northeast side, but it is not getting entrained into the core of the system. The outflow looks very healthy in all quadrants, and there is some deep convection near the center. In short, the system seems poised to continue some strengthening overnight and into tomorrow morning.

Dean is bearing down on the Lesser Antilles. You can watch Dean on the radar here.

Computer modeling remains pretty consistent. Some runs of the GFDL model earlier were eye-opening....brining a Category 4 or 5 Dean into the Central Gulf and headed for a likely Louisiana landfall. However, the models remain fairly tightly-clustered this evening.

Dean will rake through the Lesser Antilles in the morning, then likely directly affect Jamaica this weekend. After that, a Yucatan landfall looks like a high probability, then off toward northern Mexico or Texas. However, this all depends on the strength of a ridge to Dean's north, and it would only take a slight weakness in that ridge to allow for a path more toward the central Gulf coast.

Dean will be an interesting system to watch. It sure looks like it will become a major hurricane, and it will likely have multiple landfalls. Stay tuned!