Since yesterday morning, TS Odette has gotten better organized and more intense, despite fairly high vertical shear. The center has been hard to track accurately... either it's masked by the CDO or it reforms under new deep convection. Regardless, it's only drifting northeast. At 15Z today, Odette was located at 14.2N 74.2W and moving toward the ENE at 4kts. Aircraft-measured intensity is 45kts and 993mb and she still appears to be getting better organized. SSTs are still very warm (28.5C), and the oceanic heat content is very high in this part of the Caribbean, but vertical shear is not letting up much. An aside... the environmental SLP is about 1012mb now at this latitude, which is lower than it would be in the summer; this helps explain the 993mb MSLP of Odette and only 45kt winds. A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Jamaica, Haiti, and much of the Dominican Republic; a Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the eastern islands of the Bahamas. Odette is forecast to strengthen some more, but most likely not reach hurricane intensity. She has now contributed 1.0 additional Named Storm Days to the 2003 season, bringing the total to 73.0.
Please visit my tropical Atlantic headquarters.
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