Posted by: Editor on Aug 04, 2006 – 09:50 AM
newsandinfo Tropical Storm Chris rapidly ran out of steam in the eastern Caribbean, losing so much strength Thursday that forecasters who once thought it could become a hurricane said it likely would weaken to a tropical depression by evening instead.
At 2 p.m. EDT, Chris had top maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, just 1 mph above the min imum to be a named storm and down from 65 mph Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The center of the storm was about 225 miles east-southeast of Grand Turk Island.
The third named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season was moving west-northwest near 12 mph and was expected to move away from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands later Thursday, forecasters said.
“It’s pretty much a skeleton at this point,” hurricane specialist Jamie Rhome said. He said the thunderstorms that a tropical system needs to grow have been blown away by other winds in the atmosphere. Forecasters now think it isn’t very likely that it will become a hurricane, but intensity predictions are tough to make.
“Some storms do make a comeback, and some storms never ever come back,” he said.
The hurricane center said the storm would likely bring 1 to 3 inches of rain to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the southeastern Bahamas. Parts of the Dominican Republic could see 5 inches of rain, enough to cause some flooding and mudslides.
Some 600 tourists evacuated Culebra and Vieques, small islands off Puerto Rico’s east coast, as the storm approached, and Royal Caribbean said it was altering the itineraries of three cruise ships to avoid the storm.
Last season was the worst for hurricanes in more than 150 years of records. A record number of tropical storms and hurricanes formed, including the devastating Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane expert William Gray’s team on Thursday revised its forecast for 2006, saying that the season would likely bring seven hurricanes rather than nine and that only three of those would be intense rather than five.
Another monster storm like Katrina isn’t likely this year, the team said.
Laura Candelas
Associated Press