Maybe Isabel is continuing to strengthen...

[soonertwister]

but to my untrained eye she is looking sort of awful right now. Whatever recent reorganization she may have had appears to be falling apart fairly rapidly.

It looks like Isabel is encountering fairly significant shearing on the southern side, and she seems to be entraining more and more dry air. Recent IR images showing her losing a huge chunk of spiral band energy off the north side and into the trough.

I think that this cane is looking sickly right now. I'm not expecting generation into an open wave just yet, but unless she starts to encounter more favorable conditions very soon, I don't see much chance that she can get stronger - or even maintain current strength - until landfall.

It apppears that Isabel's experiment with transitioning back from an annular cane to a classical single rotation vortex is about to end up in failure.

Hopefully in 24 hours everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that a strong category 3 cane isn't getting ready to crash onto shore.

But there is still lots of time for things to change, even though time is getting shorter by the minute.

[wxman57]

See my post about dry air entrainment. Isabel is most definitely weakening now. Convection is weakening fast.

[soonertwister]

I noticed already. You must have been about ready to post about the time I started composing mine.

I'd been looking at Isabel for over an hour and thinking to myself that she looks like dead meat, but at this hour my reaction time is getting slow.

I guess I'm not getting any younger.

[abajan]

I guess I'm not getting any younger.

You know what? None of us is getting any younger, not even a newborn baby. So just keep on truckin'!

Food for thought...

[tundra]

But isnt Isabel going to grow stronger right before landfall.
It seems to me that it might regain some strength in the net
24 hrs.