Fred fades with a satellite exclamation point

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NASA JPL, Ed Olsen

NASA's Aqua satellite flew over the remnants of Fred, September 13 and captured an infrared and visible image of the storm's clouds from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument. Both AIRS images showed Fred's clouds stretched from northeast to southwest and resembled a tilted exclamation mark. During the morning hours of Monday, September 14, the remnants of Fred were located about 900 miles west of the northernmost Cape Verde islands. Associated shower and thunderstorm activity remains limited...and upper-level winds are expected to remain unfavorable for re-development.

On Saturday, September 12, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) declared that Fred was indeed "dead" as a tropical cyclone. At 5 p.m. EDT that day the NHC discussion said "There has been no central convection associated with Fred since about 0000 UTC (8 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 11) and Fred is no longer classifiable using the Dvorak technique. The lack of deep convection also means that Fred is no longer a tropical cyclone and is now declared a remnant low pressure area." The NHC used data from NASA's QuikScat instrument (on the SeaWinds satellite) to determine that Fred's circulation had weakened to that point.

As of this morning, Monday, September 14, the NHC said that Fred's remnants may continue to produce intermittent shower and thunderstorm activity as it moves west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph over the next couple of days. The Hurricane Center said that there's a small chance it may re-organize into a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours… but it's just that: a small chance.

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center