Hey, guys! I'm back in Veracruz. It was a pretty cool chase—not the perfect, fantasy hurricane I'd been hoping for—but a good, interesting one.
I rode it out in the extreme NW outskirts of Veracruz (19.216N 96.228W) and therefore nicked the SE edge of the eye a little after noon. There was an odd, "choppy" calm from around 12 noon to 12:20 pm CDT—although there were a couple of isolated, damaging blasts of wind during this time (including one at 12:09 pm), perhaps because the location was so close to the edge of the eye. There was little to no precip during this period, and the sky just to the W was very bright—almost sunny. High, destructive wind gusts and rain immediately followed just after 12:20 pm.
I recorded 985.9 mb (on a Kestrel 4500NV) at 11:50 am CDT—almost 10 mb higher than the landfall value of 976 mb—suggesting the pressure gradient was still very tight, given that the center of the eye was only a few miles to the NW. The pressure hovered in the 986-988-mb range for a good half hour, then started to rise again for real starting just after 12:20 pm CDT.
(See graph below.) (The barometer was calibrated for an estimated altitude of 20 ft, but I still need to check to make sure that altitude was accurate. If not, I'll correct these values for sea-level pressure accordingly.)
The neighborhood I was in apparently didn't have decent building codes, because the air was filled with flying debris—including thousands of heavy ceramic roof tiles filling the air like confetti.
Re: winds... Karl's wind field was small but apparently pretty symmetric when the cyclone came ashore.
(See HRD surface-wind analysis, below.)
The city of Veracruz was raked pretty squarely by the SE eyewall. Despite this, Dr. Jeff Masters said in his blog that most of the city except for the N portions did not get sustained hurricane winds, citing a rather lukewarm wind max of 40 kt gusting to 50 kt at the airport. I'm not sure I agree with him. A solid reading of 57 kt (
10-min) with a gust to 82 kt from an automated station in the harbor right in Veracruz suggests at least the waterfront portions of the city got sustained hurricane winds, since that 10-min value converts to a 1-min value of over 64 kt. And according to the HRD analysis, most of Veracruz metro got raked by Cat-1 winds. It’s important to note that the airport is several miles inland and further S than most of the city, so it was apparently just outside of Karl's small wind core.
There wasn't much of any building damage in the city center, but almost every street was blocked by downed trees when I drove back in, and there were plenty of damaged signs, gas-station canopies, etc. That kind of stuff. Damage decreases as you go further S, and the "damage gradient" is quite sharp: N areas (like where I was for my chase) got raked pretty good, whereas where I'm staying—just a few miles to the S, in neighboring Boca del Rio—there's very little wind damage.
I’ll post a video summary in a couple of weeks. The footage is so-so. I was alone on this chase, and between driving (manual transmission—ugh!), shooting video, and data collection, I was stretched a little thin. A tough chase, that’s for sure. In a way, I’m glad it’s done. My hotel has power, and I’m just going to relax here through the weekend before heading home to Southern California.
) I've never gotten in the core of one this nice, although I've often fantasized about it. Charley was that type of 'cane, and I missed it (was living in Europe back then), and that's always driven me a little insane. I came close with Dean on the Yucatan, but missed the core by a few miles.
