Watching tropical storms Leslie and Michael

Over the long weekend, Kirk made the anticipated recurvature at 51W, and then headed northeast into the cold north-central Atlantic hurricane graveyard.  The final advisory was written on Sunday morning as the storm became an extratropical cyclone.

Now on to Leslie and Michael...

Leslie is still a tropical storm, having encountered much stronger vertical shear than expected.  This morning, the storm is remains lopsided, and conditions are not expected to improve until closer to the weekend when it's forecast to become a hurricane.  The forecast track is far away from land... it's currently about 870 miles east of the northern Bahamas and 420 miles north of the Virgin Islands, and crawling northward.

Elsewhere, Tropical Depression 13 formed from an upper-level Low on Monday evening in nearly the place that Kirk formed.  Although it is also rather lopsided and extremely tiny, there are several ships as well as satellite data to support the recent upgrade to Tropical Storm Michael.  Getting the 13th named storm on September 4 is absolutely remarkable.  It's ahead of 1933 and 2004, and just 2 days behind the unprecedented 2005 season (when we needed to borrow six names from the Greek alphabet).  Michael is located about 1400 miles ESE of Bermuda, and about 1300 miles SW of the Azores... truly in the middle of the ocean.  The guidance suggests that it will slowly meander northward and remain a disorganized tropical storm for the next few days  -- no threat to land.

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