For days, the models that guide the National Hurricane Center’s forecasts had been split over the future of Hurricane Joaquin.

Different models were sending the storm to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina or to Maine or to Bermuda. The official forecast — which held that the storm would make landfall in the mid-Atlantic — was “low” confidence, as the center put it. It was an attempt to compromise between models that fundamentally disagreed.

Friday, the official forecast now takes Joaquin out to sea. A direct hit on the East Coast can’t yet be ruled out, but the top models doubt it.

If this forecast holds, Hurricane Joaquin will yield one clear winner: the model from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts — or simply, the European model — which consistently forecast that Joaquin would head off to sea.