Chris Weakens or Oh What A Beautiful Morning...

Oh What a Beautiful Morning...


Some model from the other day seems to have been right and Chris seems to be falling apart. Seems to be is the thing to remember as if you look past the southbound color and thunderstorms blown off to the south you will see a tight, neat, very organized circulation moving west past the moisture that was once it's intensity but not it's circulation.

So............breathing easier today and thinking my job will be there Monday and the City won't be blown away but... is that reality or illusion?

Models kept Chris weak through this time period always though not this weak and you have to always worry when the models don't handle a system well. He finally made the turn which they predicted but they predicted he would do so as a stronger storm.

Overall not bad but not great.

And, that circulation may regenerate it's color fast later in the day.

I'm wondering how much influence the SAL in the atmosphere may have affected it. Clark brought it up on www.flhurricane.com and I trust him tremendously when it comes to weather. SAL by the way is a specific sort of dust/sand from Africa that has it's own properties and is not beach sand now is it dust from under your sofa and it can do things your dust balls might not do. Plus.........it got extra help from that ULL to it's north east but mostly... the high came down like a bat out of hell from the north and blew the color away. The pressures go up when the color goes away.

The center however did not go away and it is very closed and very solidly still there.

Now what?

That is the question.

One might want to look at the model that predicted this to see how it is doing this morning?

Otherwise.. I'll be watching the water vapor loop for most of the day as well as TWC and CNN and actually working on my novel, an ongoing project that I rarely have time for but today it looks like I will have some extra time so write I will.

Very happy to be wrong that Chris did not attain hurricane status yesterday but that doesn't mean it won't be Hurricane Chris later on when conditions allow intensification because as long as he has such a well developed closed circulation... he can rev it up as easily as he can rev it down.

As Norcross said last night, small systems like Chris are subject to rapid changes in intensification. Trust me... Norcross has not written off this system and neither should we.

But..........we can breathe a bit better and smile a bit more and put the shopping lists on hold.

He is by the way.. BEAUTIFUL on the visible imagery, beautiful banding and a tight center and a lot will decide on if he skirts the coast just 50 miles or so north of Hispanola or if he slams into it. 50 miles to the north he can easily keep alive and keep going...

More concerned he is back to his wnw movement than I am happy about his higher barometric pressure.

You keep seeing discussion online regarding Debby of 2000 fame that fell apart and upset so many mets who were calling for evacuations of South Florida. May I say I don't believe this is Debby or that Debby applies here.. many a storm faltered in this area from problematic steering currents.

Note:

you decide, is this a Debby or a Jeanne like situation (not talking about later track but current situation)

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2004/JEANNE/track.dat

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2004/JEANNE/track.gif

Because from where I sit... both tracks are the same except Jeanne was more similar to this storm as it was not forecast to be a major and Debby was.. though why it was .... because Models said it would however no models predicted Chris to do so ...so I think the comparison is a weak one

http://www.weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2000/DEBBY/track.gif


Back to the future..for now NHC is keeping it a Tropical Storm and time will tell.

We will see what we will see and if you look at the visible you will see a very alive circulation.

Funny how the question comes up again and again... and it all involves Cuba..

Is Fidel alive? Is Raul alive? Is Chris alive?
Keep watching...
40mph wnw at 12 20.5 67.3