07/05/05 -- TALK: Hurricane Dennis

[MClarkson]

well destin is some 20-30 miles east of the eye... and this is a very compact storm.

navy pensacola is to the west of the storm and I would expect them not to experience any hurricane force winds. We will likely see from the damage swath a very localized path of moderate hurricane damage... in and around navarre.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Rapid weakening before landfall seems to be a common trend with Hurricanes now days. That's what made Andrew special... it actually gained strength before landfall and didn't fall apart at landfall.

Yes, that it does... Ivan and many other in the past have done the same thing -- weakening before landfall. Some minor weakening is usually expected given interaction with land, but the surface low pressure has risen from 930 and 941 in the past few hours... As Owen noted, and from my own experience, hurricanes that are weakening rather quickly don't seem to produce winds as high as otherwise expected. For example, a 940mb hurricane that is weakening seems to produce weaker winds than a 940mb hurricane that is strengthening (despite the opposite idea that wind change lags pressure change). Just from my experience armchair chasing, however.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Radar and satellite both appear to show almost nothing left of the storm south of the eye. Amazing how fast a powerful storm like this can fall apart. Where does all the energy go?

edit: on second thought "almost nothing left" may be a bit too strong. But the storm has definitely weakened to the south.

 

[MClarkson]

category 1 winds in pensacola in the west of the storm.

its too bad we dont have any reporters in navarre.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Radar and satellite both appear to show almost nothing left of the storm south of the eye. Amazing how fast a powerful storm like this can fall apart. Where does all the energy go?

edit: on second thought "almost nothing left" may be a bit too strong. But the storm has definitely weakened to the south.

Ivan had a similar appearance, though lacked strong reflectivity more in the western semicircle than the southern if I recall correctly. The cloud/reflectivity pattern has a slight look of a sheared storm, though water vapor also shows an area of moderately dry air to the southwest of the storm (though nothing overly impressive in terms of dry air ingestion). The northern part of the storm looks awesome as it's being strongly enhanced by the presence of the right-entrance region of the anticyclonically-curved jet streak along the east-central Atlantic coastline. The enhanced divergence in this area has certainly allowed the northern 1/2 of the storm to blossom.

 

[Dan Cook]

Eye is just east of Gulf Breeze.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Don't tell that to channel 13 in Panama City, FL. Their "trueview" doppler radar is majorly whacked... it has consistently plotted the radar data 20 miles to the north of where it really is.

Sad.

The meteorologists on that channel are clueless. I've heard how air is rising in the eye, how low pressure creates the storm surge, and don't get me started about how they actually beleive they are showing the eyewall collapsing into the eye with their "titan" 3d contour stuff.

Aaron

 

[Tim Vasquez]

"Winds not getting strong enough... must use tighter zooms and sloppier camera movements..."
- Cerebral cortex neurons 2538-3926, TV cameraman, 3:40 p.m.

 

[MClarkson]

pretty quality footage from the CNN guys... a big sign getting ripped apart...

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Aaron, I checked out that radar..
http://media.mgbg.com/wmbb/images/doprad.jpg
You're right, the image is seriously in error (and the timestamp is wrong). Surely they aren't using this on-air?

Tim

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Oh they are. They were reporting locations to be in the eye... while in actuality they were just about to be or were in the eyewall.

Aaron

 

[Owen Shieh]

The Weather Channel has received a report here from Roger Edwards and R.J. Evans (slipping my mind at the moment, don't know if they've ever been on Stormtrack) out chasing in Pensacola Bay with a wind ob of 78 mph gust, so Dr. Lyons should be mentioning it soon. That's the highest gust observed so far, which is horribly low for a cat. 3 hurricane. The pressure in latest VORTEX is still low, so there must be some strong winds somewhere, but no surface obs are showing it! Perhaps it's a few miles east of Pensacola in the rural areas where the highest winds are located.

 

[Stan Olson]

http://kamala.cod.edu/fl/latest.asus42.TBW.KTBW.html

Here's a couple reports from the hourly obs:

PENSACOLA NOT AVBL
PENSACOLA NAS HVY RAIN N/A N/A N/A N35G48 29.01F VSB 3/4
VALPARAISO RAIN 77 77 100 E53G83 29.13F
DESTIN RAIN 78 76 93 SE55G74 29.13F VSB 1

Pensacola is down, so i'm sure they got hit with a higher one.

Stan

 

[Owen Shieh]

Latest subtitle from CNN:

"Eye apparently over Pensacola; Winds calming."

Ha, I guess they don't know that the storm is almost over for them.

The tight convective band on the NW side of the eye should be entering AL soon, and that should be the most likely place for hurricane-force winds. Things should rapidly inprove everwhere else except for the heavy rain well east of the center with the onshore winds.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I thought Pensacola has been down for a while now, so I don't think it was a big gust that brought it down. The highest winds also only occur on a VERY local scale in my experience... Only rarely have I seen actual obs near the NHC-listed winds (refer to Ivan as a good example). Then again, the surface ob network is too limited to capture local wind maxima in most cases...

From the news coverage I've seen, the most damage has been smaller trees (limbs or whole trees) or signs, which would seem to fall in the 70-90mph range.

Very limited reflectivity now in the eastern 1/2 of the eyewall/storm.