Miami, August 28 (RHC)-- Weather experts say that Hurricane Dorian has significantly shifted to the east, which is good news for Puerto Rico, but bad news for the U.S. East Coast.

Dorian was upgraded to a hurricane Wednesday afternoon and was impacting Puerto Rico with outer bands and the Virgin Islands with heavy rain and wind.  The core of the storm's worst weather is passing just east of Puerto Rico.

The reason the storm has shifted is because its circulation has been rather disorganized and big convective bursts -- clusters of thunderstorms -- on the east side of the circulation are making the system lopsided, pulling and tugging the center further east. 

This means Dorian will avoid the beating it would have taken if the system had passed over the high mountains of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.  Instead, it will emerge north of the islands tonight as a healthy storm system.  That healthy system can then more easily intensify as it moves north.