Hurricane Wilma - category 5

[damienpaul]

Holy odd socks: Wilma Strengthens to Category 5 Hurricane ABC News

000
WTNT64 KNHC 190629
TCUAT4
HURRICANE WILMA TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
230 AM EDT WED OCT 19 2005
DATA FROM A RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT HURRICANE WILMA
HAS BECOME AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE
SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE. THE RECONNAISSANCE PLANE MEASURED
175 MPH WINDS AND ESTIMATED A MINIMUM PRESSURE OF 892 MB. THIS IS
THE LOWEST PRESSURE OBSERVED IN 2005 AND IS EQUIVALENT TO THE
MINIMUM PRESSURE OF THE 1935 LABOR DAY HURRICANE IN THE FLORIDA
KEYS.

FORECASTER AVILA



$$

National Hurricane Centre

[Argos]

They are talking of 884 mb. A dropsonde got to measure 881! A cat 5.5...

[Eric Vaxxine]

check it out, here

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/geo/east/

[Argos]

Cool. You might like to know this one:

http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/

[Eric Vaxxine]

Thanks Argos.

Don't these beasts normally originate east of Cuba?
Is it unusual to find one of the coast of Nicaragua?

[cyswxman]

Thanks Argos.

Don't these beasts normally originate east of Cuba?
Is it unusual to find one of the coast of Nicaragua?

Not really, especially in the latter part of the season. Conditions climatologically become more hostile for development further north and east at this time.

[Argos]

Ivan originated in the middle of the Atlantic, just north of the northeastern tip of South America.

[publiusr]

Some other links of interest:

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/view...=8868&start=60
http://www.caribwx.com/synopsis.html
http://www.caribwx.com/latest.html

[Eric Vaxxine]

Love the synopsis site.

Do they still name hurricanes boy girl boy girl? If we are in the W's, does that mean there have been a large number of them this season?

[Argos]

Yes. Twenty-one, in the Atlantic basin. The next one [case thre is one] will be called "Alpha". Check it out:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

[Eric Vaxxine]

Thanks. Great info.
If I was a betting man, I might be interested to make a bet on certain names in next years list.
Oscar, Pattty and Rafael seem ominous.

[cyswxman]

Upcoming names found Here.

[Ken Vogt]

This was posted in the CPDN forum's Wilma thread. QuickTime; thru 17 Oct.

For those of you who have high bandwidth, and want to see satellite imagery of the entire hurricane season, this is a pretty cool video

http://www.nasa.gov/mpeg/136417main_...e_320x240.mpeg

~20 MB

[ToSeek]

That's a cool video. Note how the hurricanes cool off the water they're passing over.

[Ken Vogt]

That's a cool video. Note how the hurricanes cool off the water they're passing over.

Yeah, ToSeek, I hadn't noticed that. I wonder what the color scale is? Even if it's only a few tenths of a degree, it is awesome that so large an area of ocean is cooled by such fast moving storms.

Another interesting thing, mentioned in the linked thread, is how erratic the North Atlantic storm tracks are compared to the Caribbean ones. I guess I had learned at one time why hurricanes don't affect Europe (cooler waters), but this sure brings it home.

I looked around NASA for an update including Wilma, but I don't really know how to seek. 8) They probably put the video together thinking the storm season was over.

[Tensor]

I guess I had learned at one time why hurricanes don't affect Europe (cooler waters), but this sure brings it home.

Well now, I wouldn't go that far. After all, there was Vince this year.

[jkmccrann]

But isn't one of the theories of global warming that the gulf stream will be turned off and therefore the weather in Europe will deteriorate? So, given that, is it really more likely that hurricanes will begin to hit the European landmass more frequently, even given an event such as Vince?

[pghnative]

That's a cool video. Note how the hurricanes cool off the water they're passing over.

Great observation!

I noticed though that Hurricane Rita seems to have left warmer water in its wake, at least as it passed by Cuba/Florida. I wonder how that occurred.

[Argos]

But isn't one of the theories of global warming that the gulf stream will be turned off and therefore the weather in Europe will deteriorate? So, given that, is it really more likely that hurricanes will begin to hit the European landmass more frequently, even given an event such as Vince?

If the gulf stream gets cooler we should expect hurricanes not forming over it, or dissipating as soon as they get over it.

[Argos]

Vince might qualify as a subtropical cyclone, like this rare south atlantic storm.

[Eric Vaxxine]

That Hurricane Tracker is fantastic. Orphelia went crazy and Katrina HUGE.