I heart Forecaster Stewart discussions.

His explanations of why and how always help give me insight and a peek into some of the tendencies that storms have. I probably would have bumped it back to a tropical storm status, but I see the logic in why it would be prudent to wait another 6 hours. After all, the storm has shown signs of life and sputtered down before. So some consistancy before giving it back it's storm status does make sense.

I still really don't know what to expect from Irene, and I'm leery of even trying to project out where it'll end up. So, I'm going to take a pass on this one and just watch and learn

-Mark