Well, here we go again......, Karen moving north, wait west, wait....southwest? The shear is up, now down, but coming back?! What an appropriate storm for the year we are having! If Karen were a smaller system in an "average year", i'd say we would soon be witnessing the basic de-coupling of the low level from mid levels and "game over".

On first visible sat., it appeared to me that now Karen is drifting or moving northeast??!! Upon closer review, it would seem that NHC has been tracking the center, which appears NOW to be a tighter vorticity which is obviously weakening against the shear; now acting as a more decoupled mid level, which is rotating around the broader low level surface low. In fact, perhaps not rotating around it so much, but perhaps soon to be entirely de-coupled from it. Again, in normal years, this would be the end of the system, but who knows.....
Models remain consistant with tending to re-develop and strengthen Karen, and in fact seem fairly in line with a late track cycle even more westward ( with odd exception to 0600Z run of GFDL and the European's 0Z run which from 7-10 days, just starts acting "wiggy" ).

I do not see how, given the overall appearance of Karen, how she maintains Tropical Storm designation. That said, I think we will see a large low level swirl moving around 180 degrees which will either do one of two things - eventually spin itself out and go away, or possibly redevelop under lighter shear in 2-3 days, only then to start tracking towards the Bahamas and possibly Florida. After many years of tracking and chasing hurricane's, i'd go with the "spin itself out option". This year however? Models seem more inconsistant than past years, and i'm at a point where practically nothing would surprise me.