Blog: Most powerful hurricane ever: Update 5

[esteban]

Holy CRAP! my prayers and thoughts go out to those in the path of this superstorm. wind sports are surely the farthest thing from their minds...

[windfind]

Hi Gang,

My wife's family survived the hurricane from a beach house about 40 miles north of the eye. This put them in the "safe" semicircle of the hurricane (see image below) plus it means the winds hit them from a offshore direction so they were in the lee of topography. Six people spent the night in in a large upstairs shower. Cell towers in the area did not come down so they texted us during the hurricane.

They said the worse parts was the horrific sound, the absolute darkness and not knowing if a sudden storm surge would inundate the house. They texted audio files of the storm and all I could hear were crashes and roaring punctuated by comments like "Shit!"

Below are images from the Space Station.

Here in the USA much of the east coast is covered by the WeatherFlow Hurricane Network which we installed for NOAA : http://www.weatherflow.com/coastal-weather-networks/custom-designed-mesonets/the-weatherflow-hurricane-network/

However the hurricane hit a part of the Mexican coast that is poorly covered by sensors so much is owed to the brave pilots and crew that flew repeatedly into what was the most powerful storm in history. The aircraft they use are diverse.

The premier hurricane research aircraft used by NOAA is the 4-engine Lockheed WP-3 Orion. They are the ones that most frequently penetrate into the eye of the hurricane.

NASA uses modified old DC-8s that used to take off from Moffatt Field in the Bay Area but now fly from Edwards CA.

NASA also uses two ER-2 and Gulfstream -4s aircraft for high altitude imagery and to drop sensor packages into hurricanes.

The Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft is used to sample extreme winds near the surface where the chances of loss are very hight. See images

In the Gulf of Mexico the USAF 53rd Hurricane Hunters use highly modified WC-130J Hercules out of Keesler AFB. I have many fond and bad memories of C-130's and B-52s. Lack of modern CAD led to massive over engineering and high fuel consumption. But in the long run this turned out to be a good thing in one sense since the air frames last forever.

Funny the discussion about sail size in hurricanes. I have been in winds to 100 knots on land and to 50 knots in the middle of the pacific. In neither are you even able to stand unsupported. Isobars is wrong. You are not the sail... you are the runaway kite.

Mike Godsey
iwindsurf.com/ikitesurf.com
Weatheflow.com

[dsgrntlxmply]

At 200 MPH for a cylinder 400 cm x 3cm I calculate a force of around 480 N. Suppose a 100kg sailor were a point mass with no additional surface area. 0.5g acceleration from just holding onto the mast, if you could.

The greatest wind I have directly experienced was up to 165 MPH: head poked out the top hatch of a B-17 in flight. Actual velocity probably less due to slipstreaming.