The latest information on Tropical Storm Chantal is that the wind speeds are up to 50 MPH. We mentioned in the update last night that conditions were favorable for slow intensification. Conditions are still favorable for some more intensification to take place. The one thing that continues to work against Chantal however is her forward speed which is 26 MPH.
The above are the latest rainbow IR satellite presentation. Chantal is moving off to the west northwest and should continue to do so until she begins to feel a weakness that will develop in the ridge that she is under..
On the present path that she is moving Chantal should go over and across Hispanola. The island of Hispanola has become famous for shredding apart tropical systems ..especially if they are not to strong and organized. So Hispanola could potentially cause the system to become an open wave.. However...another possibility is that the speed that the storm is moving may also be able to prevent to much damage from being done which would allow the storm to stay intact and then once again be able to re intensify.
Guidance tonight is starting to show a west ward bend towards Florida..
The GGEM shows this actually making landfall a little bit North of Florida and shows a slow down in speed once across Hispanola.. Here is the GGEM at 132 hours out..
00z UKMET shows a similar situation but weaker...
00z GFS takes Chantal into Florida.. and is slower being that the image below is 150 hours out..
Lets take a look at current conditions around Chantal...
Shear right now is not really an issue being that it is presently in a area of about 5-10 knots but notice off to the west northwest the shear does increase. And you can see this shear increase on the shear tendency map as well
Vorticity seems a little bit more broad this morning compared to yesterday at this time frame.
The greatest convergence lays off to the southwest of the system...
However, divergence across the system is decent at the present time.
In summary we think that this has room to intensify some before it encounters Hispanola and depending on how fast CHANTAL moves across Hispanola and how strong she is will determine whether or not she can survive the journey across the island.
Presently we think that anywhere from Florida to the Carolinas has to keep an eye on this system for landfall. Once it makes landfall it should get pushed west as the ridge pushes back to the west. So this means it should move inland across the southeast once it makes landfall..
We are not going to make an impact location tracking map yet because we are not certain that this will make it across the island intact.
We will update this again during the evening later today!
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