Well, here is the latest model info.
The US GFS model has shifted the track significantly to the North, with the storm coming a shore north of St. Pete.
The UKMET model shows it coming ashore down around Ft Myers and then coming up to about Melbourne, which is similar to what a storm did the year before last, doing minimal damage here because of the long trek over land seemed to have made it fall apart.
The obvious thing to do in terms of forecasting is to split the difference between the two which puts it back to what they have been predicting for some time.
Back in 2004, the worst hurricane season in Florida history, an official at the NHS let slip something when he said,
"We don't draw the storm's path based on what we think it will do but rather what we want people to do." If you predict the storm will make that long lonely trek between Ft Myers and the Cape most of FL will go back to sleep. Show it coming through the population centers of Tampa and Orlando and they'll be boarding up and going crazy. The worst thing that can happen is a storm that makes an unexpected turn and goes through the population centers with very little warning - which is what occurred with Hurricane Charley in 2004. The NHS was predicting Charley would do what Helene did, and be not very close to Tampa. But the storm made a 45 degree turn around Ft Meyers and went to Orlando and then straight up I-4 to Daytona Beach, moving F A S T. There were even people who evacuated from Tampa and got hotel rooms in Orlando only to discover they had plunked down a few hundred bucks to be in the middle of the storm. The funny thing was that while the NHS were concentrating on their models and predicting it would be even further West, the local meterologists (I worked with one) were saying, "Naaaa. That thing is coming this way." And when it did they swung into action and with the NHS near catatonic over its models failing, told everyone just what was going to happen.