cieldumort
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Loc: Austin, Tx
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Area of Interest: "Hurricane" Chris in North Atlantic - Fish Spinner
Thu Jun 21 2012 01:17 PM
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Chris has continued to maintain an eye since late yesterday afternoon, and since then, the eye has become less ragged, with convection surrounding the eye, particularly within the eyewall, becoming deeper despite traveling over less and less marginally warm waters.
NHC has been extraordinarily conservative in the handling of Chris, keeping him as a 60MPH TS, despite having to repeatedly toss in qualifying comments that he may be stronger than that.
The reality is, despite the lower SSTs, in the words of our new NHC director Rick Knabb, "if it looks like a hurricane... it probably is."
A simple comparison of Chris to other high latitude tropical cyclones, to be used as a QC set for standardization, shows Chris as more organized, and with deeper convection, than 2011's Sean at 65MPH, 2005's Vince at 75MPH, and arguably besting 2005's Espilon at 85MPH.
I rarely strongly disagree with NHC's calls, but this would be one of the times, and this view is nearly unanimous among observers I have spoken with. Chris, if not upgraded to hurricane status by the 11AM today, will almost certainly have to be upgraded so post-season.
An upgrade by 11AM at this time would come as better late than never. The most recent Dvorak estimate out of SAB is T4.0, while CIMSS' ADT should be entirely tossed out, for not using the right pattern, and for initializing the center too far to the left.
Additionally, the most recent Windsat pass from 946 UTC (4:46 EDT), showed 60 knot winds in all quadrants, suggesting that at the very least, Chris was a 70MPH storm at that snapshot in time.
The argument that the lower SSTs and interaction with the marine layer could be preventing effective wind transport flies in the face of how prior high latitude hurricanes have been handled, especially given that there is considerably deeper convection over a much greater percentage of Chris, than was present in the comparison set of tropical cyclones mentioned above.
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