Rough road ahead for Fred but its not dead. Still has a lot of red.

Hurricane Fred grew to a strong 120mph category three hurricane yesterday.  If you blinked, you missed it and most likely won’t see it again.  Fred is on a weakening trend that should continue and hasten as the system begins to encounter shear and cooler SSTs.  Hurricane Fred remains a well-organized cyclone at this time.  The forecast indicates, however, that we may be dealing with Fred for a long time to come.

Satellite Presentation

Hurricane Fred continues to have established outflow in all quadrants of the system.  However, the hurricane is more assymetrical due to stronger southerly winds running on top of the system.  You can see in the shear image below that 10kts south-southwesterly winds are hitting the southwestern side of the hurricane.  These winds accelerate to 40kts or 45mph as they race over the hurricane.

You can see this in the infrared imagery below and how the “eye” or center of the hurricane is well to the south and west of the convection.  Even the banding features are located to the east and north of the Hurricane.

Water vapor imagery shows Fred plenty of moisture but only contained within Fred.  Elsewhere around the system it is very dry.  It is expected to remain this way for much of Fred’s remainder.  This will put a big wrench in Fred’s plans if the system wants to hang around for a long period of time.  However, the hurricane does continue to tap into two moisture streams: one from the south and west; the other from the east.  This by itself would help Fred keep its convection activity similar to now.  But, these streams will likely be cut off over the next 24 hours and Fred will be in an unfavorably dry atmosphere.

Visibly, the hurricane looks almost like a normal hurricane – without the eye; like a circular bed of cotton (I love these early morning visible pictures).  When you compare this image to the IR image above, however, you can see Fred’s cloud-tops aren’t high at all with temperatures around -60°C.  And even that is confined near the center of the storm while elsewhere is in the -50’s and lower (warmer).

I wanted to show the microwave pass the NHC talked about in this morning’s storm discussion.  Notice how the eye is more visible in this image.  However, while it’s circular which is a good sign for hurricanes, it’s not closed which is a bad sign.  Furthermore, you can see the deepest convection to the northeast of the eye as well as the moisture stream from the south.  The hurricane is not as organized as it may appear on visible or even IR imagery.  This organization will only get worse as the hours pass.

Forecast

Hurricane Fred is forecast to turn more northward throughout the day and the before turning more easterly according to the NHC.  By early Saturday, Fred is expected to turn back to the north and west.  This takes the hurricane over cooler waters for a lengthy period of time going into tomorrow which will help reduce convection and make the system more of a low-level cyclone.

The official NHC forecast path:

And core models from CSU:

As you can see the hurricane is expected to make a broad reverse-S path across the sub-80°F SSTs.  This is anticipated because the trough that has weakened the high steering Fred earlier will begin to lift north and east inducing the northward turn (which we already see) and the easterly turn which we should see tomorrow.  However, the trough will not have a complete grip on Fred and is expected to leave Fred behind.  Afterwards, a high pressure ridge is forecast to build in temporarily and this is why you see the turn back towards the northwest by the end of the 5-day forecast period.

However, this is where things will get a bit interesting for Fred.  Due to the shear that will continue over the hurricane and the cooler SST’s Fred is likely to be only a low-level system.  Again, this is talked about from the NHC in this mornings storm discussion.

Towards the end of the weekend another trough is forecast to move in breaking down the high before it, too, lifts north and east.  However, these are mid-to-upper-level systems.  Fred is likely to be a shallow system thus it likely will not be influenced much by this second trough.

The image above is the GFS forecast as of this morning (technically, last night) for wind shear 850mb to 500mb at the end of the five-day period – enough to show Fred but not enough to really indicate how deep Fred will be.  Fred is near 24°N, 39°W around this time.  Notice that shear is indicated to the north of the system but not over.  There is also a low-level high pressure system off to the northwest of Fred at this time.

The GFS and GFDL (which, on the run I see seems to be pretty realistic with Fred’s intensity decrease) have continuously wanted to turn the storm back towards the west with the GFS turning more towards the west-southwest.  See the GFS Ensemble below:

We can have great confidence that Fred will turn back towards the west-northwest towards the end of the 5-day period – for now.  But, a shallower system which Fred most likely will be will be like a pinball in the lower levels.  Fred will be moving back over warmer waters towards the end of the five days.  Though shear is expected to be intense in the upper-levels at that time and Fred – if the system is still a closed surface low as some models anticipate it breaking open including the GFS – could regenerate enough convection to become a deeper system and, therefore, feel more of an influence from the second trough or even a third.  But, it could also be timed out that Fred gets beneath a high that allows for additional strengthening and more westward motion before a trough takes over and finally pulls Fred away.

Bottom line is Fred is at too high a latitude to make it all the way to the United States and most likely not even Bermuda.  But, we’ll have to see how the models handle Fred with each new run.  If Fred should be a more disorganized system and not be able to take full advantage of favorable conditions when they return, the system could remain very shallow and possibly drop in latitude which opens a whole new ball game.  Fred will be around for a while.  This could be one of those storms that makes you scratch your head.  As I said, a pinball.

Intensity

As expected, the intensity forecasts call for gradual weakening with Fred going into a more hostile environment both in the air and at the surface.  Though it seems some are dissipating the system completely within or shortly after five days, I’d say this is more likely because they are not identifying a low-level Fred as well as the others.

Track Hurricane Fred and get current wind radii, forecast plots and forecast wind radii on our interactive hurricane tracking chart.