Tropical Storm Fred strengthened into a hurricane over the east Atlantic Tuesday. The National Hurricane Center’s track forecast will quickly push Fred to the north allowing the hurricane to steer clear of any land.

At 5:00 PM AST, the National Hurricane Center named Tropical Depression Seven – soon to be Tropical Storm Fred. Fred however is going to remain at sea and very likely won’t even get anywhere close to the western Atlantic.

A strong tropical wave is showing increasing organization and convection and according to the National Hurricane Center this system is likely to become the seventh tropical depression of the 2009 Atlantic Basin Hurricane Season.

The National Hurricane Center has downgraded Erika to a tropical depression, and it is expected that the storm will be further reduced to a mere low within a day. NHC’s wording is pretty straight-forward in that they do not believe that Erika will be able to regain any organized activity and restrengthen. And, kudos to NHC forecasters for going against the hurricane model guidance and getting it right.

The National Hurricane Center has played Erika very cautiously and with good understanding. There are a lot of inconsistencies between various forecast model guidance. The latest official forecast track issued by NHC shows that narrow black line move in a west-northwest direction, but Erika has decided once again to play by her own rules.

The title is a bit misleading, this post couldn’t obviously provide a detailed analysis of the entire tropical climatology for September.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami just issued Tropical Discussion #2 on Tropical Storm Erika and its pretty much a repeat of the first discussion. But really interest me is the official NHC forecast verses the HWRF and the GFDL model forecast (which have been fairly accurate so far this season).

The 5th named storm of the 2009 Atlantic Tropical Season is now Tropical Storm Erika. The NHC forecast graphic below show the forecast track of Erika and keep the storm forecast as a tropical storm.

The National Hurricane Center and USAF Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft are currently investigating an area about 260 miles east of the Leeward Islands to determine whether or not a tropical cyclone has formed in the system currently known as Invest94l.

The National Hurricane Center has had some fun with Invest99l, which became Tropical Depression Two, which was then downgraded to an Invest after a few days, and then upgraded back to Tropical Depression Two and then just this morning upgraded to the first named storm in the Atlantic Basin for the 2009 Hurricane Season – Tropical Storm Ana.