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
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That looks potentially devastating.
Not at all. The purpose of language rules (ie suggestions) is to facilitate communications:
eg It is well known through numerous studies that the overuse of Capitalization greatly impedes the comprehension*speed of nearly all people. NewYorkCity recently spent a $100million or two changing street signs because the excess time spent in reading the all-capitalized versions caused driver distraction leading to snarl ups and traffic accidents.
The use of 'maroon' is most often a deliberate(winking)reference to BugsBunny's "Whatta maroon..." endrun around the HaysCode.
And 'I even teached it wrong' may soon become the standard instead of 'taught' under the trend to regularize the conjugation of irregular verbs. Look at how quickly the recently standard 'misspelt' became the obsolete/incorrect spelling of 'misspelled'.
'tweren't no' is an accent affectation combined with that grammatical no-no, the double negative. Many languages and nearly all creoles (including English creoles) use double negatives to reinforce the importance of the negative.
Heck, it was considered fairly standard in English (consider 'no-no', still standard) until the Reign of Grammarians. A phrasing such as 'not impossible' still conveys the feeling of lower plausibility than the use of 'possible'. There are MANY other examples.
The double(triple/etc)negative is still a VERY important part English-language legalese.
"You mean all those years I spent learning English was a waist?"
Only if you've let it girdle your ability to share your ideas with others.
* Yet the NWS/SPC/NHC routinely use all-capitals in their weather reports and warnings. Because those in charge are used to reading all-capitals -- and thus see no reason to change longstanding tradition -- and not because of the absurdly weak "international treaty obligation" to "accommodate old machinery".
Never mind that the public in general is harmed through their inability to quickly discern the IMPORTANT parts of WARNINGS out of the mass of less important secondary info.
Their other web-pages are properly written, why not warnings? It isn't as if they couldn't be written for the ancient teletypes then corrected during the transcription for the web-pages.
Treaty obligations are routinely renegotiated.
And that old machinery is so obsolete that it's more expensive to repair once than to replace with new equipment and pay for new communications hookups. It uses so much valuable bandwidth that the bandwidth-savings alone could be used to pay for replacements.
it is not hard to think that Super Typhoon Tip holds the record for strongest worldwide because since 1987- the year recon stopped in the west pacific, there are many many typhoons that are definitely stronger- strongest in the world...
Recon found in Super Typhoon Megi 175 knots (200mph) 1 minute winds which is the strongest worldwide in terms of winds but over at wikipedia, they don't mention anything about it :?
Interesting. This system responded to DMIN exactly the way a tropical or sub-tropical system would, convection fading as the sunsets and beginning to fire up as we head into the night.
Very fast like 15 minutes between notice and funnel
That's because the system is of tropical origin; it will respond as a tropical disturbance would at DMIN and DMAX.
That's interesting
Name the many typhoons that are stronger than Wilma?
Models pretty much, except the CMC keep it a trough. The CMC briefly has a low over SFL. Lower convergence stretches across SFL which makes me think it may tend that path more. Not sure if we will see it gain Low statues as it does, though not impossible.
That's the point, it's tropical and responding as such, not hybrid or non-tropical.
As tropical as it has felt today, I'm not surprised.
There have been 7 Super Typhoons to surpass Hurricane Wilma in terms of intensity. Hurricane Wilma was not a typical typhoon despite that. Typhoon Megi peaked at 185 mph, not 200 mph.
Nonetheless, it very well could be elevated for now.
That looks extremely nasty. Lubbock better watch out.
078
WFUS54 KLUB 300138
TORLUB
TXC303-300215-
/O.NEW.KLUB.TO.W.0004.120430T0138Z-120430T0215Z/
BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LUBBOCK TX
838 PM CDT SUN APR 29 2012
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN LUBBOCK HAS ISSUED A
* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
SOUTHERN LUBBOCK COUNTY IN NORTHWEST TEXAS.
* UNTIL 915 PM CDT
* AT 836 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A TORNADO. THE MOST
DANGEROUS PART OF THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR WOLFFORTH...OR ABOUT
20 MILES SOUTHEAST OF LEVELLAND...MOVING EAST AT 25 MPH.
* SOME LOCATIONS NEAR THE PATH OF THIS STORM INCLUDE LUBBOCK SOUTH
PLAINS MALL...WOLFFORTH...SLIDE AND WOODROW.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A TORNADO MAY FORM AT ANY TIME...TAKE COVER NOW! ABANDON MOBILE HOMES
AND VEHICLES FOR MORE SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER. AVOID WINDOWS.
TO REPORT SEVERE WEATHER...PLEASE CALL THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
AT 8067451290.
A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1100 PM CDT
SUNDAY EVENING FOR THE PANHANDLE AND NORTHWEST TEXAS.
LAT...LON 3339 10208 3355 10208 3360 10169 3339 10168
TIME...MOT...LOC 0138Z 267DEG 20KT 3346 10204
Circulation doesn't look as defined.
Severe Weather and Flash Flood Warnings
Note: This page will reload every 2 minutes. Warnings are listed with the most recent first.
Click on the station ID to bring up list of recent severe weather statements.
SVR T-STORM WARNING SPRINGFIELD MO - KSGF 903 PM CDT SUN APR 29 2012
SVR T-STORM WARNING NORMAN OK - KOUN 902 PM CDT SUN APR 29 2012
SVR T-STORM WARNING LUBBOCK TX - KLUB 850 PM CDT SUN APR 29 2012
SVR T-STORM WARNING NORMAN OK - KOUN 850 PM CDT SUN APR 29 2012
TORNADO WARNING TULSA OK - KTSA 849 PM CDT SUN APR 29 2012
TORNADO WARNING LUBBOCK TX - KLUB 838 PM CDT SUN APR 29 2012
This will produce more damage than an isolated tornado...
Texas supercell:
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Tip 870
June 875- Measured near eyewall, not in center of eye.
Forrest 876
Nora 877
Ida 877
Rita 878
Vanessa 879
to name a few.
these were during the recon era but that ended in 1987. if recon didn't end, there would be tons more...
Undobtedly more of those prior to 1959 when the JTWC ATCRs started coming out. STY Wilma in 1951 took out a recon plane so it was probably in the low 900 to upper 800 mb range and Halsey's Typhoon in 1944 was apparently below 900 mb when he ran the US Fleet into it and a 1920's storm near the Philippines had an 886mb pressure measured by a ship that managed to survive.
Yes Megi peaked at 200 mph( 175knots) 1 minute based on recon reports but Jtwc didn't go with that so they have her listed as 185mph. weird. Jeff Masters had a page on Megi, you should check it out..
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comm ent.html?entrynum=1662
unfortunately this is biased when comparing Megi to Wilma/Gilbert because it took recon to discover Megi's strength whereas previous storms didn't have recon.
Modis satellite photo off California today.
Reporting softball size hail..
Liked the Ragu commercial before the live broadcast.
I would imagine that they are having a pretty tough time with it, has looked on and off hail/rain-wraped.
Not elevated; beam was at ~1000ft estimated on the 0.5deg scan when the circulation first formed. Best guess would be a 5-10min tornado duration from NNW to SSE between Ropesville and Wolfforth.
"There's gonna be high winds and a severe thunderstorm soon. I guess the best thing to do is to take cover under a waterproof sheet held up by a metal antenna and get drunk."
XX/AOI/XL
MARK
24.46N/80.11W
7 is not much for a basin that have close to three times the average amount of storms as the atlantic..you must also note that recon is not able to fly in storms that are far away example: Igor...as Dr. Masters suggested, the peak intensity of Wilma may never be determine, as recon stop taking measurements at or close to peak intensity...it was also stated that the intensity of some of the western pacific storms were being overestimated.
Dead on the Dance Floor.
Not the obituary I'd want.
THE PWAT ON THE MIAMI EVENING SOUNDING IS AT 1.87 INCHES, OR 170%
ABOVE AVG AND IN THE 99TH PERCENTILE FOR THIS TIME OF THE YEAR.
SO WITH THAT SAID, SHOULD A BAND OF HEAVY SHOWERS
DEVELOP...LOCALIZED LOCALES COULD SEE HEAVY RAINFALL OVERNIGHT
WITH POTENTIAL FLOODING CONCERNS DEVELOPING. HOWEVER, THIS THREAT
DOES NOT LOOK AS HIGH AS EARLIER THOUGHT, THOUGH STILL POSSIBLE.
SO WILL KEEP THE FLOOD WATCH GOING. ALSO, THE HEAVY RAIN RISK MAY
INCREASE ON MONDAY. KEY WEST AND MIAMI RADAR IMAGERY SHOWS A
CLUSTER OF CONVECTION AND CYCLONIC FLOW SOME 70 NM SE OF MARATHON.
THIS IS AT 8-10K FT. RIGHT NOW NO SIGNS OF A SURFACE CIRCULATION.
THIS FEATURE ASSOCIATED WITH A TROUGH WILL MOVE WEST NORTHWEST
OVERNIGHT-MONDAY PLACING SOUTH FL IN A FAVORABLE ESE MOIST WIND
FLOW FOR POSSIBLE LOCALIZED HEAVY RAINS. /GREGORIA
You had quite a bit of damage Geo
no it's not 7, there are more.I just named a few and remember this is for storms before 1987. in 1987 recon stopped so now they determine storms based on satellite and satellite is always low. you must also note that's 15 years of missing information.
FOX 34 Weather Authority: Tornado Warning
brought to you by Ragu: "We go through a lot of cell phones this way."
Oh.
I didn't realize you had so much damage.
translation
yes
is the answer to the question
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