Fred Drops Dead For Now, Like Arnold, He Will Be Back...

Before you rag on NHC for not knowing what they're doing, remember my past posts..."computer models do not do very well with weaker storms."   They did better with Fred when he was stronger & better defined going into Hispaniola, but the tall mountains disrupted his circulation and he never recovered.  The day light (visible) satellite views show no closed rotation and NHC has made Fred just a Tropical Wave .

The second graphic shows small vortexes (Orange Ls) with the third view placing an upper low over the eastern Gulf.  Upper lows hinder tropical development so I would suspect any reorganization of Fred to be slow today.   Despite not having a center/initialization point, NHC continues to shift the future track/cone farther to the west with the cone almost to us.

Frankly, that doesn't bother me since Fred has so much working against him, he's unlikely to be more than just a moderate rainmaker with the bulk of the rain to the right (east) of his center line.   As long as he doesn't do something stupid, like the weak low that stalled over BTR in 2016, Fred should pull away on Tuesday leaving us to watch the next Storm.

Tropical Storm Grace formed east of the Island this morning and is on a track similar to Fred's.   The better solution for us is for Grace to be on the right (north) side of the track and turn up the east coast of Florida never getting into the Gulf.  It's way too early to speculate/guess which way she will go.  If she takes the right side of the cone for her track, that would keep her over water and away from the mountainous land masses.   Grace looks way more organized than Fred did when he approached the Islands.

What we don't want to see with Grace is the structure that major Hurricane Linda has in the Pacific (top photo).  However, I think you can see Grace already has a cluster of storms around her center (arrow).  I'll be watching to see if hints of an eye start popping out this afternoon.  Next post coming after 4 PM.  Stay tuned!