Hurricane Humberto

[Derrick Herndon]

What is the sample period for a sustained wind speed ob?

It would appear to be a 2 minute averaging. If you look at the continuous wind data the max sustained wind for station SRST2 was 70 mph (30.9 m/s) and a gust to 85 mph (38 m/s). The station is at 12 meters so that probably offsets the 2 minute averaging to make the 1 minute winds 70 G 85 mph.

 

[Scott Overpeck]

I woke up yesterday morning looking at GR3 and noticing a nice spin off to my south. Looks like a depression to me on radar. My wife and I left for a doctors appointment in the morning in Galveston thinking it is probably not going to be too much of a problem, maybe become a depression while we were there. We are finishing up at the doctors when we here about it being a TS. Decided to drive over to the sea wall to see the waves, and took a few pics with the camera phone. Nothing major but a good rainband coming through at that time. Had good 6ft waves with 25-30mph winds. Not too bad for 3pm. I had to head back home quickly since I got called in to help with staffing issues at the office (HGX). It was a fun storm to watch, and fortunately not too much trouble. If it tracked 50 miles to the northwest of its track, we'd have about 10-15 inches of rain instead of 2-6 inches along the coast. Still, looks like Winnie, TX got the brunt of it, and will have to be investigated. Not sure when we'll be sending someone out.

Funny thing is that the NAM had been forecasting something like this over the last weekend. Just off on its evolution, development and track but at least it had something where a couple of days ago the GFS had nothing. I think the NAM at one point(Sunday/Monday runs?) had a system going into Matagorda bay with a 998mb low wed night and then circling west of HOU and dumping a bunch of rain. At the time I thought the NAM was the outlier, but turns out to be closer to reality than we thought.

 

[B Ozanne]

Does anybody have a radar loop/movie of the entire spin-up?

 

[Bob Schafer]

Does anybody have a radar loop/movie of the entire spin-up?

You can generate one or more in 12 hour loops here:

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/radar/

You could also get the 24-hour wv loop here:

http://weather.cod.edu/analysis/satrad.regional.html

Best I can do. Hope that helps.

 

[Chad Cowan]

Taken from TornadoVideos.net:

 

[Rodney Harper]

Does anyone happen to have the max wind gusts in Beaumont and the max sustained wind in Beaumont or a link to where I can find the info?? I am trying to put together a paper on this storm. Thanks for any help.
Rodney

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Does anyone happen to have the max wind gusts in Beaumont and the max sustained wind in Beaumont or a link to where I can find the info?? I am trying to put together a paper on this storm. Thanks for any help.

See http://www.uswx.com/us/stn/KBPT/?code=c ... Change the "show me the last ## observations" to go back as far as you want (well, I don't know what the limit is, but you can go back quite a ways). You want the "PK WND" comment, most likely.

 

[Justin E. Reed]

I know that the max gust at KBPT was 84mph. I think the max sustained wind was between 65-75mph.

 

[rdale]

Deja vu ;> Read above - max sustained winds at BPT were 54mph, and it only had winds > 40mph for less than an hour, so it looks like Hurricane H came onshore as a tropical storm.

But in order to keep the global warmers satisfied, I'd lay odds pretty low that their post analysis will downgrade it.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

Deja vu ;> Read above - max sustained winds at BPT were 54mph, and it only had winds > 40mph for less than an hour, so it looks like Hurricane H came onshore as a tropical storm.

KBPT airport is 20 miles from shore and about 37 miles from where landfall occurred right around High Island. I would be extremely cautious about making a claim of it's *landfall* strength by using an observation from such distance from landfall. Contrary to apparently your belief, tropical system wind fields do indeed weaken when they interact with land friction and lose their 85+ degree water source of energy.[/quote]

But in order to keep the global warmers satisfied, I'd lay odds pretty low that their post analysis will downgrade it.

?!? I certainly believe it was a brief hurricane as it came ashore, albeit marginal... but still hurricane classification based on all the data that was at hand at the time.

 

[rdale]

Agreed - maybe too dramatic. But I also find it difficult to believe that the system can lose that much strength in just 20 miles, and that nothing else observed winds even close to hurricane strength. If it really was going to die that quickly, maybe the bulletins should stress that "winds are 85mph, but nobody will experience those." I'd rather the bulletins stress the winds that are expected from the system as it affect people, not the fish.

 

[rdale]

Interesting twist though... NHC said that at 5am (3 hours after landfall) it still had surface sustained winds (based on aircraft reports at 850mb) of 85mph. So either it lost strength as it hit BPT then gained strength 50 miles inland, or something else happened. It was only an 80mph hurricane over water...

 

[Jack Beven]

Did you see the Tropical Cyclone Update we issued at landfall which stated the landfall winds were 85 mph based on aircraft and radar data?

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2007/al09/al092007.update.09130713.shtml?

Jack Beven

Interesting twist though... NHC said that at 5am (3 hours after landfall) it still had surface sustained winds (based on aircraft reports at 850mb) of 85mph. So either it lost strength as it hit BPT then gained strength 50 miles inland, or something else happened. It was only an 80mph hurricane over water...

 

[rdale]

So it had 85mph winds, diminshed by 30% when it hit BPT, then strengthened again yet never had winds recorded of hurricane strength? And at 11am it was still a 65mph storm, yet recorded winds in the path were all 30-40mph?

Just seems like once again the winds are overplayed, especially when obs show they need to be downgraded. Is it the formulas that need refining for correlating low-level winds to the surface?

 

[Derrick Herndon]

Humberto did not lose strength at BPT. The METAR obs are hourly. There were no specials thus the max sustained winds from the station were not officially transmitted. These appear to have occurred in between the observation times as evidenced by the peak wind observation of 73 kts at 0857Z, 10 minutes after the last METAR was sent. Thats a pretty good gust for an inland station and CAT1 storm. It is not unusual for hourly METARS to miss the strongest winds in a small storm. Just yesterday Typhoon Nari (12W) passed directly over the small island of Kumejima. The max winds were likely > 100 kts as indicated by satellite estimates and the pressures recorded by this station. Yet the strongest winds at the station (and another just to the east, both in the eyewall) were only 60-70 knots(10 minute wind) or around 80 kts for a 1 minute wind.

Are we certain that BPT was perfectly located to experience the absolute strongest winds from Humberto? How exposed is the anemometer at the station? These are the questions you have to ask when trying to sort out surface obs as a verification of hurricane intensity.