Tropical Storm Dorian weakens as it heads toward Cuba

Tropical Storm Dorian weakens as it heads toward Cuba
The National Hurricane Center in Miami expects that Dorian, moving west
at 22 m.p.h., will weaken to 'tropical depression' status before passing
over the eastern tip of Cuba.
By Pete Spotts, Staff writer / July 26, 2013

As of 5 p.m., Eastern time Friday, Dorian was centered some 1,300 miles
east of Puerto Rico, sporting maximum sustained winds of 45 miles an
hour. The storm is moving west at 22 miles an hour.

Earlier Friday, forecasters noted that Dorian was becoming less
organized and would encounter drier air and wind shear, which weaken
tropical cyclones. Those conditions now seems to be exerting their
influence on the storm.

RECOMMENDED: Hurricane prep: Are you smarter than a storm tracker? Take
our quiz

Although the official forecast has the storm weakening to the point of
dissipation by next Wednesday, forecasters suggested Friday afternoon
that if the current weakening trend continues, the storm could be
demoted to a tropical-wave status – one notch below a tropical
depression – much earlier.

Large uncertainties are attached to five-day track forecasts. Still, the
best estimate for Dorian's path through Tuesday has shifted a bit south
compared with the previous forecast. The slight tweak to the track,
however, still brings the system as a tropical depression along the
north coast of Hispanola and over the eastern tip of Cuba.

Dorian emerged Wednesday from a tropical depression located over the
eastern tropical Atlantic, just in time to become the first Atlantic
tropical cyclone to be tracked by a pair of new supercomputers and
significantly upgraded hurricane-forecasting software.

The new supercomputers, one based in Reston, Va., and the other in
Orlando, Fla., represent a threefold increase over the hardware they
replace in the number of calculations they can perform each second.

Source: "Tropical Storm Dorian weakens as it heads toward Cuba -
CSMonitor.com" -
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/0726/Tropical-Storm-Dorian-weakens-as-it-heads-toward-Cuba