Hurricane Felix

[George Kourounis]

What a storm!!

I was very close to flying to Belize to intercept this one but now with the land interaction from Honduras, it made the decision for me. I'll be sitting this one out.

It's impossible to get to Honduras target in time and Belize has too many variables right now. Add to that the fact that I'm supposed to leave Florida to return home to Toronto tomorrow.

I hope we don't see another Central American tragedy like hurricane Mitch in 1998. The next few days are going to be rough down there.

George Kourounis
www.stormchaser.ca

 

[Dave Lewison]

I dont know why the hurricane models(GFDL, HWRF) were so off on the intensity, the global models, especially the GFS(from which some data is incorporated into the hurricane models) had progged an excellent upper level pattern.

Very warm SSTs, anticyclone aloft, no shear=strengthening, often rapid, to a cat 4 or 5. Its not much more complex than that.

The NHC has said it many times...intensity forecasting is much more difficult than general track forecasting. What models often don't have such a good grip on is how the size of a cyclone can dictate how fast it's capable of strengthening. Felix is pretty small...hurricane force winds only out to 30mi radius. Small storms like this (and like Charley in 2004) are capable of pulling off some really rapid intensification. They also tend to get unraveled just as quickly over land. From what I've seen, the larger the cyclone is, the better the forecast models tend to do with intensity.

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Well I guess the one saving grace for Central America is the storm itself is not that big when compared to other recent storms such as Hurricane Frances, Rita or Katrina. The center of the destruction looks limited and its forward speed may limit some of the surge. Depending on how far north the center hits the coast, this could still setup a wicked surge wave heading west into Belize.

 

[MClarkson]

It appears that Felix is almost done with its ERC, but it is rapidly running out of time to re-intensify significantly before smacking Honduras. A plane is on its way, the delay due to the grounding of the NOAA P-3s due to last nights incident. The good thing is the forward speed and relative small size of the circulation should limit some of the rainfall over the extremely vulnerable mountains.

 

[MClarkson]

143 knots flight level... usually means about 120-125 at the surface. ~4 hours out till landfall, might restrengthen just a little bit more.


extraped a 938mb

 

[B Ozanne]

While you were sleeping Felix is now back to a cat 5 and will likely make landfall as a 5.

If you thought back to back 5's were rare, how about back to back landfalling 5's?

Edit:

It looks like there are some small islands just off the coast of Nicaragua. The eye passed directly over them. It looks like Felix is hitting an even more remote area than Dean. Is this where Harrison Ford built that big ice making machine?

The biggest city looks like Puerto Cabezas, which will be on the southern side of the storm. Away from the strongest wind and surge. On the other hand I think this area is heavily deforested and prone to flooding and mudslides.

 

[Chris Hayes]

Felix is a weaker storm, but this reminds me of Mitch when it hit the same general area back in '98. Anyone remember how fast Mitch was moving? I know it hung around a lot longer than Felix will.

 

[B Ozanne]

Felix is a weaker storm, but this reminds me of Mitch when it hit the same general area back in '98. Anyone remember how fast Mitch was moving? I know it hung around a lot longer than Felix will.

Felix is making landfall as a much stronger hurricane than Mitch. Mitch basically stalled over Honduras, Felix is not forecast to do that.

 

[MClarkson]

2 landfalling 5s... and we still have a month and a half of prime season left.


For Felix, it is the rain that is going to be a problem now.

 

[HAltschule]

Initial reports from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua report that 20 fisherman are missing and that the town is totally destroyed. This comes from a town official who says everything is flattened. Also, it was reported that landfall was over an area where 1000's of Miskito Indians live and whose only escape route is by canoe. These people were unable to escape in time.

"The area around Puerto Cabezas is sparsely populated and dotted with lagoons and marshes, but the storm threatened many poor Honduran and Guatemalan villages further inland that are perched on hillsides and vulnerable to mudslides. Up to 40,000 Hondurans were evacuated to shelters, but some 15,000 people were unable to find transportation and were forced to ride out the storm in their homes.
“They couldn’t be evacuated because there is no fuel to take them to safe areas,â€￾ said Carolina Echeverria, a lawmaker from Cabo Gracias a Dios on the border with Nicaragua, where Felix landed."

 

[Alexandre Aguiar]

The front pages headlines of the newspapers from Nicaragua and Honduras are impressive this morning. As the images are too large, I will publish the links to the front pages we hosted in our website.

EL NUEVO DIARIO FROM NICARAGUA - "DISASTER" (has a very good photo of people praying in a church partially destroyed). The paper also mentions that "Puerto Cabezas was destroyed by a supernatural power".

http://www.metsul.com/__editor/filemanager/files/2007a/felixjornal1.jpg

LA PRENSA FROM NICARAGUA - "DEVASTATION"

http://www.metsul.com/__editor/imagemanager/images/setembro2007/felixjornal2.JPG

EL HERALDO FROM HONDURAS - "TEGUCIGALPA UNDER LANDSLIDES ALERT"

http://www.metsul.com/__editor/filemanager/files/2007a/felixjornal3.jpg

TIEMPO FROM HONDURAS - "72 TO 96 HOURS MORE OF RAIN"

http://www.metsul.com/__editor/filemanager/files/2007a/felixjornal4.JPG