h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

1500Z Forecast August 3, 2006 for Tropical Storm Chris

== Current Conditions ==
Well, Chris has supprised us all. It seems that late yesterday, a ridge of high pressure that was to the northeast of Chris moved further south and brought an increase in wind shear along with it. Chris, being a small storm, was quick to react to this change and has weakened considerably. Looking at the visual satilite image, the low level circulation is clearly visible as a swirl of clouds, but these clouds lack convection. Instead, the vast majority of the convection has been pushed to the extreme southern side of the storm, over Puerto Rico, although there are small areas of convection poping up in the outermost arm bands on the northern side of the storm. The intensity fix has been set at 40 kts (46 mph| 74.1 km/h) by a reconosaince plane. Chris seems to have begun his westward turn and is currently 247.7 nm (285 miles|458.7 km).

== My Forecast ==
Track-wise, seeing that Chris has already started on his westward turn, I favor going with Chris tracking over or along the northern coast of northeastern Cuba. This is based off of the current motion of Chris being more westward than I was expecting it to be at this time as well as the southernly shift of the forecast models. The model that I tend to favor, the GDF model (GDFT, GDFN, and especially GDFL), which seems to have a relatively good deal of accuracy for the forecast track, has shifted it's forecast to a more reasonable track. At the time of yesterday's forecast, it was predicting that Chris would track accross the Dominican Republic and Hati the move westward. The current GDF forecasts are tracking Chris right along the northern coast of northeastern Cuba from 72 to 96 hours from the time the model was initilized (600 UTC).

Late Initialization Models
http://euler.atmos.colostate.edu/~vigh/guidance/atlantic/store/late_AAL03_06080306.png

Intensity-wise, I'm going to stick with the official forecast's prediction of Chris' intensity remaining pretty much stable, at least until it reaches the Gulf. Depending on conditions then, Chris might intensify, or weaken.

== Official Forecast ==
My predictions based mainly on the 900 UTC (5 am EDT) advisory. A new advisory (1500 UTC) was just issued that puts Chris as a weak tropical storm with winds at 35 kts (40.3 mph|64.8 km/h) and forecasted to be downgraded to a depression soon, although it is still forecasted to remain relatively at the same intensity after this downgrade.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2006/CHRIS.shtml

== Evaluation of Previous Forecast ==
My previous forecast called for a slow intensification and a track that had Chris turning westward later than actually occured. This was not the case for the intesity forecast. As for the forecasted track, it was not too far off, although we'll have to see what Chris does in the coming days.