THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 26, 1996 TAG: 9610260223
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 48 lines
Lili won't quit.
Defying expectations it would weaken and lose its tropical characteristics days ago, the hurricane has held its own and intensified while roaming the open Atlantic. Don't fret, however. It's more a threat to the Azores - and maybe even Portugal, Spain, France or the British Isles - than it is to the mid-Atlantic coast.
``It's heading up toward Europe,'' said meteorologist Rich Johnson of The Weather Channel in Atlanta.
At 5 p.m. Friday, the center of Lili was about 600 miles west-southwest of Flores in the Azores. It was moving to the east-northeast near 26 mph, and that motion was expected to continue today.
Maximum sustained winds were near 90 mph with gusts to 110 mph. A gradual weakening is likely, the Hurricane Center said, but that's been the expectation since Monday.
Lili's top winds had dipped to 75 mph on Wednesday from a peak of 115 days earlier. But they surged again on Friday, hitting 100 mph.
The storm is heading into cooler waters, ``So maybe the weakening that we have been forecasting to occur for many days will finally begin,'' said Miles Lawrence, a Hurricane Center meteorologist.
There was some evidence Lili was indeed finally fading. In addition to the slowing winds, the eye, which had been very distinct in satellite images, began to fill with clouds Friday afternoon.
The storm has moved so far east that it is out of range of some of the National Hurricane Center's computer models.
The center issues a map that charts the possible path of storms up to 72 hours. But it only handles data as far east as Longitude 15 degrees west. With Lili expected to move well east of there, Friday's forecast image looked like a baseball bat with the end hacked off.
The hurricane season is in its statistical downslope. The historical peak is Sept. 10; the season ends Nov. 1. And there isn't much else happening besides Lili, the season's 12th storm.
A westward-moving tropical wave is expected to spread showers over the Windward Islands today, but conditions do not appear favorable for development into a tropical depression. ILLUSTRATION: TRACKER'S GUIDE
STEVE STONE
The Virginian-Pilot
[For a copy of the chart, see microfilm for this date.] by CNB