1. Karen will continue to produce rainfall causing flash floods and mudslides across Puerto Rico, Vieques and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands today even as the center moves away from the region.

WHAT'S NEW:

The Tropical Storm Warning for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, and the U.S. Virgin Islands has been discontinued. The government of Antigua and Barbuda has discontinued the Tropical Storm Warning for the British Virgin Islands.

SUMMARY OF ALERTS:

There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.

Rainfall: Karen is expected to produce additional rainfall accumulations of 1 to 2 inches across Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, with isolated storm totals of 8 inches.

These rains may cause flash flooding and mudslides, especially in mountainous areas. Some areas in southeastern Puerto Rico have already received up to 5 inches of rainfall, which has caused some flooding.

At 500 AM AST (0900 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Karen was located near latitude 20.5 North, longitude 65.2 West. Karen is moving toward the north near 14 mph (22 km/h), and this general motion is expected to continue this morning. A motion toward the north-northeast is forecast to occur by this afternoon and continue through Thursday. On the forecast track, the center of Karen will continue to move farther away from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands today through Thursday.

Maximum sustained winds are near 45 mph (75 km/h) with higher gusts. Some strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours.

Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 70 miles (110 km) from the center.

The estimated minimum central pressure is 1003 mb (29.62 inches).

Karen's convection has increased significantly and become better organized since the previous advisory. The well-defined low-level circulation center that previously had been fully exposed now has intense convection with cloud tops of -85C to -90C almost completely encircling the center at times. During the last leg of an earlier Air Force Reserve reconnaissance mission, an 850-mb flight-level wind of 46 kt and SFMR surface winds of 37 kt were observed in the southeastern quadrant, suggesting that Karen may have weakened slightly during an earlier convective hiatus. However, the recent increase in deep convection over the center, along with a pronounced increase in the Doppler velocities and the development of a smaller radius of maximum winds of less than 10 nmi above 20,000 ft, suggest that Karen has likely strengthened. For now, however, the intensity is being maintained at 40 kt. The secondary mid-level circulation that had developed north of Puerto Rico several hours ago has since weakened based on San Juan Doppler radar data and satellite images.

Now that deep convection has redeveloped, resulting in a stronger and deeper the vortex column, the motion has steadied off in a northerly direction of 360/12 kt over the past 6 hours. A northward motion is forecast to continue this morning, followed by a turn toward the north-northeast by this afternoon. A north-northeastward to northeastward motion accompanied by a gradual decrease in forward speed is expected in the 12-48 hour period. By 72 hours, steering currents are forecast to collapse and Karen is expected to stall or make a clockwise loop. By 96 and beyond, the global models forecast that a ridge will build eastward from the southeastern United States to Bermuda, forcing Karen in a slow westward to west-southwestward direction. The new NHC track forecast is very close to the previous advisory track, and lies close to the simple consensus track model TVCN, which is about midway between the corrected-consensus models FSSE located to the north and NOAA-HCCA to the south.

The intensity forecast remains somewhat perplexing with the dynamical global and regional models showing no strengthening for the next 4 days, followed by weakening and even dissipation by day 5, whereas the GFS- and ECMWF-based statistical-dynamical models show slow but steady strengthening during the forecast period with Karen becoming a hurricane by 120 hours. The main reasons for global models weakening the cyclone is due to the low- and upper-level circulations decoupling in about 3 days, followed by very dry mid-level overspreading of the low-level circulation, shutting off convective development. The problem with that scenario is that Karen will be moving into very low vertical shear conditions and underneath an upper-level anticyclone by 36 hours, which favors strengthening since the cyclone will also be sitting over 29 deg C water of considerable depth. For now, the new official intensity forecast remains a compromise between the weak dynamical model solutions and the stronger SHIPS intensity forecasts, which is a little above the intensity consensus models IVCN, HCCA, and FSSE.