LIVE: Hurricane Helene real-time wobble tracker

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — WFLA’s Real Time Wobble Tracker detected Hurricane Helene’s center making a slight eastward deviation from the National Hurricane Center’s official track on Thursday.

Thursday, the hurricane entered radar range, which allows the Wobble Tracker to more effectively track where the center of the storm is headed.

Forecast models predict that the storm will make landfall as a Category 3 Hurricane somewhere in the Big Bend region of Florida or the Florida Panhandle. However, the impacts will likely be felt further away along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Video below: Watch live News Channel 8 coverage of Hurricane Helene

WFLA meteorologists track “wobbles,” or small movements, on the system’s path. Those wobbles determine where the hurricane is headed.

However, as Helene continues moving forward, there will likely still be changes in its path that will affect where it is headed.

Video below: How to effectively track Hurricane Helene with the WFLA Wobble Tracker

While the movements may seem negligible at first glance, these wobbles do make a big difference when they compound into a change in the storm’s path.

This was the case when Max Defender 8 first launched the wobble tracker for Hurricane Ian, a Category 5 hurricane that was originally expected to make a direct hit on Tampa Bay but “wobbled” further south to its landfall in Charlotte County, Florida.

The wobble tracker watches the motion of hurricanes and tropical storms by using a combination of data from satellites, radar, the forecast trajectory, and the previous path the storm is on, to give an indication how the path is changing in real time.

The WFLA Wobble Tracker will remain actively streaming 24/7 until Helene makes landfall.

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