Tropical Storm Fred: August 31, Update A

I watched the end of Erika... she didn't really reform, although it looks like Florida got a bit of rain and stuff. I also watched Tropical Storm Fred develop into a hurricane pretty much over the Cape Verde Islands in the far eastern Atlantic. I agree with the NHC in their assessment of him yesterday as they took him up to a cat 1 hurricane, and I agree with their current analysis of downgrading him to a Tropical Storm.

He is currently at around 18N, 25.4 W, heading generally NW at 12mph:

You can see his center of circulation a few hours ago and the lack of circulation now. His convection also took a hit, as you can see in the latest IR satellite images:

He still has strong circulation in the lower half of the troposphere, but poor 'Hurricane' Fred doesn't have too much of a chance really at the moment for a couple of reasons:

First, he is heading directly into a rather large area of dry and dusty Saharan Air Layer (the yellow and orange area over the Atlantic): 

This is drying him up like a luscious grape in a desert. 

Second, his name is Fred. Now, no offense to the tougher Freds around the world, but all the Freds I know of are lovely, harmless, mostly huggable beings that make me smile. When I lived in Florida, I even took to naming the black snake that lived at the bottom of my staircase 'Fred' after one of the Weasley twins in Harry Potter so that I could summon up enough courage to walk past him with a simple 'Good Morning Fred'. So how could Tropical Storm Fred cause too much harm, hey? ;-) (I'll still be keeping an eye on him though, of course - especially with that circulation). 

And that's all for today my friends! 
Ciao,
J.

p.s. We're not in Hawaii anymore, but I believe surfs up everywhere... 

(Hurricanes Kilo, Ignacio, and Jimena).

Blogs archived at http://jyotikastorms.blogspot.com/
Twitter @JyovianStorm
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DISCLAIMER: These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast and the National Weather Service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.