They’ve started the rollback from the pad. Probably the best decision, since the consensus of the tracks is to put the storm right over the Cape when it exits the state, between Cocoa Beach and Daytona.

Well, at least I won’t have to be distracted by taking any trips up to the Cape to watch a launch for the next few weeks.

[Update at 10:30 AM EDT]

It’s starting to look like the storm is going to be a little further west than even the early morning predictions were:

Speaking of RECON, it good to have them back in the storm this morning. The Cuban Government did allow the Air Force reserve plane to fly into Cuban airspace this morning to get a good fix on the storm’s center. We thank them a great deal. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, Cuban overflights can be acomplished to better warn their citizens as well as ours. The RECON data is so important, a few hours without it can mean big changes! Ok, back to the storm…The latest guidance is again tightly clustered thanks to the valuable data that the NOAA Gulfstream IV jet was able to add to the model suites. This has landfall in extreme southwest Florida and the upper Keys mid-morning on Wednesday as a moderate to strong tropical storm or minimal hurricane, although the odds of Ernesto topping 74mph is very small. The storm should then begin to re-curve to the north and northeast east of Tampa, over Orlando to just southeast of Jacksonville by late in the day on Wednesday into the overnight hours.

We’ll still get a lot of rain over here, but probably the winds will be barely tropical force. If that prediction is true, it also means that they probably didn’t need to roll back. Wonder if they’re thinking about putting the crawler in reverse?

[Update at 3:37 PM EDT]

From my mouth (so to speak) to NASA’s ears. As Mark Whittington notes in comments, they’ve decided to do exactly that.

Good crisis management by NASA. Everything they’ve done so far is exactly what I would have done (well, in the context of this particular mission), for what little it’s worth. The emphasis needs to be on flying this vehicle, early and often, despite the hand wringers.