Odile...or Not?

Over the past two days, Hurricane Odile has been rumbling northeastward and crossed the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula overnight.  High integrated precipitable water values (contours below) are rumbling up the Gulf of California with and in advance of Odile, posing the potential for another major monsoon surge and related convection over the next couple of days.   

IR and GFS precipitable water analyses from 1500 UTC 13 Sep – 1500 UTC 15 Sep 2014

As with Hurricane Norbert, the long-range forecasts of Odile by the GFS have been super wacky (a technical term).  The forecast from Saturday morning (13 Sep) called for Odile to move westward and be located well off the Baja coast (near the bottom of the plot below) at 1200 UTC Friday 19 Sep.

The forecast from Sunday morning called for Odile to weaken with just some remnants over the northern Baja Peninsula by 1200 UTC Friday 19 Sep.

And now the forecast from this morning calls for Odile to curve hard to the east and be in New Mexico by 1200 UTC Friday 19 Sep.

The latest ECMWF model forecast favors southeast Arizona at 1200 UTC Friday 19 Sep.

Ah, the forecast joy of eastern Pacific hurricanes interacting with midlatitude troughs!  As the computer said in War Games, the only winning move is not to play.