TS Fred: September 8 Update A

I hope you had a "yaba daba doo" Labor Day weekend in the US. :) This year
Mother Nature also took a break. But yesterday a blob in the far eastern
Atlantic developed into a Tropical Depression, and now we have Tropical
Storm Fred. He's just SE of the Cape Verde Islands, centered at about
11.8N, 27.3W and is moving west at 15mph. He's so far east that he doesn't
yet appear on the NHC satellite page under the 'Atlantic Wide View'. Hmmm.
Maybe it's time to rename that to the 'Almost Atlantic Wide View, Just
Excluding That Bit Off Africa And Around The Cape Verde Islands, Which
Surely Aren't All That Important For Tropical Storms Anyway'. If you want
to see him, scroll down to the 'Eastern Atlantic', under Meteosat-8 (which
is a different satellite than the GOES images that cover the rest of the
Atlantic.

Winds speeds are estimated to be about 50mph, although they estimate his
central pressure to be 1000mb. Those two numbers don't quite match up in
my head - I think wind speeds are a little higher. Sea surface temps are
about 28deg C. He will grow. Circulation is quite well developed,
extending quite high in the tropopause (lowest 10-15km of atmosphere) for
such a little storm. Wind shear is low, so there is plenty of room for
convection to develop. The cloud tops are alteady cool.

The forecast track shows he will be moving WNW any second now, and then NW
in the next day or so. Why bother forecasting tracks via the western
Atlantic when you can save time and effort by forecasting them all to come
directly to the UK, huh? ;) I think he'll remain on a more westward track
than the 5am advisory shows, for now at least. There's a high pressure
system that he (like all storms) is moving around. I'll write a
bit'o'science about pressure systems in the next update later.

Famous Fred quote:"Chance is the fool's name for Fate". Which Fred? :)

Until later!
J.

Disclaimer: see earlier entries.