Hurricane Charley Intercepted

[cdcollura]

Hello everyone...

Hurricane Charley was intercepted last week (Friday the 13th) in Punta Gorda, FL with Myself and the "Weathervine" storm intercept team.

The best way to describe this is like driving INTO an F3 wedge tornado that is about 20 miles wide and finding the strongest building you can find to safely observe the storm (well, safer, not exactly "safely")!

We encountered 145 MPH sustained winds with gusts to and over 175 MPH ... A strong category 4 hurricane (winds 131 to 154 MPH). Intornado terms, with PEAK 175 MPH winds, this is like a tornado of F3 intensity, just a much wider damage path ;-(



The picture above is the turmoil of flying debris inside the eyewall of Charley in Punta Gorda, FL at about 4PM 8-13-2004.



Here is a view of the eye of the storm looking up inside the calm eye!

Check out more pictures at my web site at the link below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/char04.htm

Sample videos available at ... www.weathervine.com

Thanks and enjoy! Chris Collura


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[Joel Wright]

Incredible pics and vids man! Awesome job. I can only imagine what that must have been like. That's the first eye video I've ever seen from underneath the eye. I've always wondered what it'd be like to be in the eye of a storm like that. Now I have a little better understanding.

 

[Caleb Lawrence]

Very good stuff. Wish I could have been there as an observer...I think.