Open AccessAn Extreme Event in the Eyewall of Hurricane Felix on 2 September 2007
Author(s) -
Sim D. Aberson,
Jun A. Zhang,
Kelly Nuñez Ocasio
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
monthly weather review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.862
H-Index - 179
eISSN - 1520-0493
pISSN - 0027-0644
DOI - 10.1175/mwr-d-16-0364.1
Subject(s) - eye , tropical cyclone , meteorology , graupel , environmental science , climatology , limiting , dropsonde , storm , atmospheric sciences , geology , snow , geography , mechanical engineering , engineering
During a routine penetration into Hurricane Felix late on 2 September 2007, NOAA42 encountered extreme turbulence and graupel, flight-level horizontal wind gusts of over 83 m s−1, and vertical wind speeds varying from 10 m s−1 downward to 31 m s−1 upward and back to nearly 7 m s−1 downward within 1 min. This led the plane to rise nearly 300 m and then return to its original level within that time. Though a dropwindsonde was released during this event, the radars and data systems on board the aircraft were rendered inoperable, limiting the amount of data obtained. The feature observed during the flight is shown to be similar to that encountered during flights into Hurricanes Hugo (1989) and Patricia (2015), and by a dropwindsonde released into a misovortex in Hurricane Isabel (2003). This paper describes a unique dataset of a small-scale feature that appears to be prevalent in very intense tropical cyclones, providing new evidence for eye–eyewall mixing processes that may be related to intensity change.