Did Hurricane Wilma have 209 mph sustained winds?
At last week's 30th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology of the American Meteorological Society, Dr. Eric Uhlhorn of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division presented a poster that looked at the relationship between surface winds measured by the SFMR instrument and flight-level winds in two Category 5 storms. Hurricane Hunter flights done into Category 5 Supertyphoon Megi (17 October 2010) and Category 5 Hurricane Felix (03 September 2007) found that the surface winds measured by SFMR were greater than those measured at flight level (10,000 feet.) Usually, surface winds in a hurricane are 10 - 15% less than at 10,000 feet, but he showed that in super-intense Category 5 storms with small eyes, the dynamics of these situations may generate surface winds that are as strong or stronger than those found at 10,000 feet. He extrapolated this statistical relationship (using the inertial stability measured at flight level) to Hurricane Wilma of 2005, which was the strongest hurricane on record (882 mb), but was not observed by the SFMR. He estimated that the maximum wind averaged around the eyewall in Wilma at peak intensity could have been 209 mph, plus or minus 20 mph--so conceivably as high as 229 mph, with gusts to 270 mph. Yowza. That's well in excess of the 200 mph minimum wind speed a top end EF-5 tornado has. The Joplin, Missouri EF-5 tornado of May 22, 2011 had winds estimated at 225 - 250 mph. That tornado ripped pavement from the ground, leveled buildings to the concrete slabs they were built on, and killed 161 people. It's not a pretty thought to consider what Wilma would have done to Cancun, Key West, or Fort Myers had the hurricane hit with sustained winds of what the Joplin tornado had.
Figure 1. Hurricane Wilma's pinhole eye as seen at 8:22 a.m. CDT Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005, by the crew aboard NASA's international space station as the complex flew 222 miles above the storm. At the time, Wilma was the strongest Atlantic hurricane in history, with a central pressure of 882 mb and sustained surface winds estimated at 185 mph. The storm was located in the Caribbean Sea, 340 miles southeast of Cozumel, Mexico. Image source: NASA's Space Photo Gallery.
Figure 2. Damage in Joplin, Missouri after the EF-5 tornado of May 22, 2011. Image credit: wunderphotographer thebige.
Official all-time strongest winds in an Atlantic hurricane: 190 mph
The official record for strongest winds in an Atlantic hurricane is 190 mph, for Hurricane Allen of 1980 as it was entering the Gulf of Mexico, and for Hurricane Camille of 1969, as it was making landfall in Pass Christian, Mississippi. In Dr. Bob Sheets' and Jack Williams' book, Hurricane Watch, they recount the Hurricane Hunters flight into Camile as the hurricane reached peak intensity: On Sunday afternoon, August 17, and Air Force C-130 piloted by Marvin Little penetrated Camille's eye and measured a pressure of 26.62 inches of mercury. "Just as we were nearing the eyewall cloud we suddenly broke into a clear area and could see the sea surface below," the copilot, Robert Lee Clark, wrote in 1982. "What a sight! Although everyone on the crew was experienced except me, no one had seen the wind whip the sea like that before...Instead of the green and white splotches normally found in a storm, the sea surface was in deep furrows running along the wind direction....The velocity was beyond the descriptions used in our training and far beyond anything we had ever seen." So, the 190 mph winds of Camille were an estimate that was off the scale from anything that had ever been observed in the past. The books that the Hurricane Hunters carried, filled with photos of the sea state at various wind speeds, only goes up to 150 mph (Figure 2). I still used this book to estimate surface winds when I flew with the Hurricane Hunters in the late 1980s, and the books are still carried on the planes today. In the two Category 5 hurricanes I flew into, Hugo and Gilbert, I never observed the furrowing effect referred to above. Gilbert had surface winds estimated at 175 mph based on what we measured at flight level, so I believe the 190 mph wind estimate in Camille may be reasonable.
Figure 3. Appearance of the sea surface in winds of 130 knots (150 mph). Image credit: Wind Estimations from Aerial Observations of Sea Conditions (1954), by Charlie Neumann.
Figure 4. Radar image of Hurricane Camille taken at 22:15 UTC August 17, 1969, a few hours before landfall in Mississippi. At the time, Camille had the highest sustained winds of any Atlantic hurricane in history--190 mph.
The infamous hurricane hunter flight into Wilma during its rapid intensification
While I was at last week's conference, I had a conversation with Rich Henning, a flight meteorologist for NOAA's Hurricane Hunters, who served for many years as a Air Reconnaissance Weather Officer (ARWO) for the Air Force Hurricane Hunters. Rich told me the story of the Air Force Hurricane Hunter mission into Hurricane Wilma in the early morning hours of October 19, 2005, as Wilma entered its explosive deepening phase. The previous airplane, which had departed Category 1 Wilma six hours previously, flew through Wilma at an altitude of 5,000 feet. They measured a central pressure of 954 mb when they departed the eye at 23:10 UTC. The crew of the new plane assumed that the hurricane, though intensifying, was probably not a major hurricane, and decided that they would also go in at 5,000 feet. Winds outside the eyewall were less than hurricane force, so this seemed like a reasonable assumption. Once the airplane hit the eyewall, they realized their mistake. Flight level winds quickly rose to 186 mph, far in excess of Category 5 strength, and severe turbulence rocked the aircraft. The aircraft was keeping a constant pressure altitude to maintain their height above the ocean during the penetration, but the area of low pressure at Wilma's center was so intense that the airplane descended at over 1,000 feet per minute during the penetration in order to maintain a constant pressure altitude. By they time they punched into the incredibly tiny 4-mile wide eye, which had a central pressure of just 901 mb at 04:32 UTC, the plane was at a dangerously low altitude of 1,500 feet--not a good idea in a Category 5 hurricane. The pilot ordered an immediate climb, and the plane exited the other side of Wilma's eyewall at an altitude of 10,000 feet. They maintained this altitude for the remainder of the flight. During their next pass through the eye at 06:11 UTC, the diameter of the eye had shrunk to an incredibly tiny two miles--the smallest hurricane eye ever measured. During their third and final pass through the eye at 0801 UTC, a dropsonde found a central pressure of 882 mb--the lowest pressure ever observed in an Atlantic hurricane. In the span of just 24 hours, Wilma had intensified from a 70 mph tropical storm to a 175 mph category 5 hurricane--an unprecedented event for an Atlantic hurricane. Since the pressure was still falling, it is likely that Wilma became even stronger after the mission departed.
I'll have a new post by Tuesday at the latest.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 — Blog Index
Thanks Dr. Masters
I read this and was stunned.
Thanks you for this enlightening post Dr Masters
I am so glad these blogs were active during the 2005 storm season because we had such a season that hopefully we will never see again.
and Wilma affected all of us here in South Florida.
It made going thru storms like Wilma much easier because we had "friends" here on WU
that helped us get thru the storm then the after storm...which can be worse than the storm.
Thank Goodness for WU!
Good morning everyone, a very wet day in store for SE Florida.. According to forcast we are expecting to get rain for the next 8 days in a row... we will be ducks by then!
Enjoy your day.
That's not true. Even though hurricanes with that insane intensity in winds usually face dry air intrusion or an EWRC, Camille made landfall at peak intensity, same with the Labor Day Hurricane.
Also, what makes you think that it's impossible to have winds in excess of 200mph? Because it's never happened before? It's entirely possible, heck it's even probable that Wilma did. It's minimum pressure was clocked at 882 mb, but they had to leave while the storm was intensifying. Wilma's central pressure was deeper than recorded, probably around 879mb, and could have easily clocked 200mph winds.
Oh no.. as much of a weather geek as I am, I would NEVER fly in a plane thru a hurricane.
Now I could be outside on the ground in a storm...and have done that alot, standing behind a wall to not get hit by wind and just watch all the damage happening before my eyes..
but I am not fond of flying anyway..I would be white knuckle in that situation!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Camille
I'd personally say more like "possible" instead of "probable" but that's certainly different than someone claiming it never can happen. All of these different techniques are just estimates... heck, even when they hit land we only have estimates of the maximum sustained winds because those areas can be small and pass between anemometers.
I'd be cautious with a new estimation technique already bringing out the "probable." Either way, very very strong for winds, and quite an amazing strengthening feat.
Ah, I talk a good game. And I'd probably just do it once. And for some reason I don't get motion sickness until afterwards. After going out in the boat takes me a whole day to get my land legs. Lol. Yeah, guess I'll stick to earth bound observations. Humberto was an experience. Now if we could just get something interesting during the day... :)
This is fascinating information about the cat 5 storms with tiny eyes. It seems there is some correlation between the intense wind speed and the minuteness of the eye. I also remember thinking at the time Wilma was going through that rapid deepening that we might be underestimating its winds. I would not be at all surprised if Wilma bottomed out below the last official measured pressure, either. Anyway, that's all moot. But still interesting.
On current weather, so far we've gotten almost no rain in my neck of the woods... just a couple of brief showers around dawn... despite the heavy overcast skies of the last 24 hours. It looks like Caymans and Cuba may get more rain, especially given the TCHP of the waters in the WCar. However, I'm expecting we will get some afternoon rain, so I am definitely travelling with my raincoat today....
eye teeth?
and gusts of 255 mph
Both Wes and Doug ended up practically across the street from each other...one at the hospital and one at the court house in Punta Gorda. Thank God, both are OK and I talked to both last night. Wes suffered a much more traumatizing experience as part of the hospital collapsed and numerous windows blew in, injuring numerous patients and staff who were huddled in the interior on the 3rd floor. He had been through both Andrew and Opal, and said the winds were FAR worse, even though it only lasted 20 minutes or so. This may be true as I've now heard that the hospital's anemometer clocked a 173 mph gust before blowing away. Furthermore, it's interesting to note that Punta Gorda's last observation had a 109 mph wind gust with a SLP of 997.4mb. This was only 15-20 miles NE of the center. This meant that another *50+* mb pressure fall had to occur in that short distance to acheive the measured SLP of 941mb, so by rough calculations...cat 5 winds in Punta Gorda were entirely possible.
and in the morning as well
must be a quiet saturday
I agree we've seen many storms weaken as they approach the coast. However, there have been numerous other storms that have strengthened as they approached, due to a variety of influences I won't list right now [and which I'm sure others can if I'm not in the blog].
I have learned over the years not to rule out anything. Wilma COULD have hit Cancun with cat 5 winds; it's happened along the Yucatan coast before. Camille was small enough to maintain the extreme cat 5 winds all the way to landfall. IIRC, either Dean or Felix of 2008 did so. Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it's impossible.
Lol. Just showing my age. Pay me no mind. :)
scholar.google MPI Author: Emanuel
Forgot the name of it though(believe it was Typhoon Grace). Perhaps Godzilla farted, thus fueling the beast!
Nope... Way too much shear
Lol. You may have a point there. :) Shuttin' up now. :)
Even if the winds didn't get to 200 mph.
Think if the earths rotation was even a little bit faster, I watched a show on what would happen if the earths rotation was even slightly faster, they said it was possible that the winds would be much faster like with Jupiter. That would be a crazy storm!
Texas Forest Service unveils wildfire app
Texas Forest Service unveils wildfire app
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texans will be armed with a new Internet tool this wildfire season designed to help anyone spot their wildfire risk and how to respond to it.
The Texas Forest Service on Friday unveiled the new app, the Texas Wildfire Risk Assessment Portal, or TxWRAP, on the steps of the state Capitol.
It uses mapping technology to allow not just emergency response officials but homeowners and the general public to spot acute wildfire risk within a 2-mile radius of where they live.
The projections are based on climate and topology factors that could make fire likely.
Some 26,000 fires across Texas since December 2010 have burned more than 3.9 million acres. The worst was in Bastrop, where monster blazes in September destroyed more than 1,600 homes and charred 33,000 acres.
Wilma was an absolute beast. I wouldn't be surprised if her sustained winds actually where that intense.
It would more than likely have been tropical but with shear up towards 80-90 knots there's no chance
We should pick up some very useful moisture here. Unfortunately it looks like the SE Bahamas, where they could really use it, are going to mostly miss out.
Atmospheric warming altering ocean salinity -- Surface salinity changes for 1950 to 2000.
Red indicates regions becoming saltier, and blue indicates regions becoming [less salty].
Enlarged Image
526LargoFl: Ice Shelf in Antarctica has shrunk by 85% in 17 Years?
[And a more detailed version of the story]
got contractors here
doing kit cupboard install
waitin on a unit for move in
I just gutted my kitchen and took down a wall and everything still a big mess..
but going to luck great when it is finished.
Good luck with your new kitchen cabinets!
some areas aready more than 1"...
and we have rain in ou forcast for next 8 days...
Viewing: 1 - 51
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 — Blog Index