Tropical Storm Chris: July 9, Update A

Not much time for a nice chit chat today, but tomorrow, if Chris behaves, I will talk about the fascinating Natural Disaster Prediction XPRIZE - there are two more weeks to submit ideas for the design of a competition that will help save lives and reduce economic losses from tropical storms and earthquakes. 

Tropical Storm Chris is currently at 32.3N, 74.3W, and has decided to have a rest from his 2mph movement yesterday so he's pretty much stationary again. Winds are now officially 70mph, central pressure is 995mb. This makes him a strong 

In my (ahem, always humble) opinion, I think he is already a hurricane. There is good circulation in the lower half of the troposphere and I see circulation in the upper troposphere as well - a sure indicator of a hurricane. But even more obvious... the satellite imagery shows an eye...

This suggests his winds are actually closer to 90mph and he's currently a mid-to-strong cat 1 storm. The top image is a visible satellite image, and the lower one is infrared. 

<Technical Alert!> The infrared imagery is usually the most useful because it not only does it show where the storm is, but it also gives us an indication of how strong the storm is and what sort of weather we have. The colors (going from white to blue to green) represent how high the clouds reach into the atmosphere because they are based on the temperature at the top of the cloud (which is what the satellite sees). It gets colder the higher you get in the troposphere (you should all know about the troposphere by now!), so we can tell from the cloud top temperature how deep the clouds are, and therefore how strong the convection is! As the colours (yes, that's with a 'u') go from blue to green to red to yellow, the stronger it gets. 

To see the center of the storm, I usually prefer to look at the visible satellite imagery unless it is a well defined storm (which Chris is). <End Technical Alert!> 

Chris is still on track to generally stay at sea and head to the northeast until he gets closer to Nova Scotia.

That seems reasonable to me at the moment.

More tomorrow! 

Toodle pip,

J.  

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DISCLAIMER:
These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms (my storm blog). If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast. This is not an official forecast.
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