TROPICAL STORM FRED Discussion Thread

For me, I trust the NHC cone more and more every year. Including sometimes 5 days out. I think their paths border on magic and a super crystal ball. But intensity understanding and forecasts have a long way to go.

Using an GFS averaged sounding can show you why that could be the case.

The low level winds are out of the east, pushing the storm west. The mid to upper level winds are pushing from the south toward the north. Hence the NW motion expected once in the gulf. If the storm were severely disrupted, it wouldn't be as tall and wouldn't feel the north push as much as the west one and send it moving more west as a weaker system. The 18z models and the 12z ensembles tended this way with a disrupted storm weaker and to the west and a stronger system going north faster and ending up farther east. 

Fred has been down graded to a depression.

That sounds hard though. 

Not that the CMC ever has much weight to it, but today's Canadian ensembles were even more spread out..

Brilliant!!