Humbling....

The weather often times has a way of humbling me. One of those times has certainly occurred with Chris.

I consider tropical weather forecasting to be one of my strong suits as a meteorologist. To me, all systems looked go for Chris to likely become a hurricane by this morning. However, I wake up this morning to see Chris a shadow of its former self, struggling to hold on to life as a very weak tropical storm. Quite frankly, I simply did not see this dramatic weakening as a big possibility yesterday.

What happened? Well, I think it was a combination of two things. First, the system entrained dry air, and that initially started the weakening process of Chris. Also, northerly shear impacted the system, and those two factors were enough to beat up Chris significantly.

What we have this morning is a swirl of low and mid level clouds. No deep convection is associated with the circulation center of Chris. Check out this visible satellite loop...

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/flt/t1/loop-vis.html

Chris still has a well-defined low level circulation, and if it can develop convection near that center, some re-strengthening is possible. However, it now has a tough road ahead of it with Cuba in its not-so-distant future.

So, I will take this lesson and run with it. Maybe I missed something that I could have seen yesterday indicating Chris would weaken? Maybe not? Either way, it just means I will search twice as hard for indications of what will happen next time.