NASA GSFC's Laboratory for Atmospheres in collaboration with partners in NOAA, DOE, JPL, MSFC, and AMES, is planning to develop a comprehensive Earth System Model that will be cloud-resolving in the atmosphere and eddy-resolving in the ocean. As a very preliminary first step in this process, the resolution of the current version of NASA's fvGCM has been increased to .25 degrees globally. Initial experimentation with this model focused on hurricanes that had presented significant difficulties to forecasting in 2002. This was followed by experimental real-time 5-10 day forecasts beginning in August 2004, which included all hurricanes and tropical storms during this period. Initial results show significant improvements over corresponding fvGCM forecasts at .5 degree resolution in terms of the ability to represent the structure and evolution of tropical convective systems and storms, as well as in the prediction of track and intensity. At the present time, only a limited number of comparisons have been made to operational predictions. These show some examples of less and comparable skill as well as examples of very significant improvements. Each of these is being studied in order to better understand the nature of the differences.