Hurricane Jimena

[Josh Morgerman]

Again, by your earlier post, it seemed that you were implying that you have enjoyed judging the thoroughbreds from both sides, from the unique perspective of having gone through their eyes. My mistake.

Obviously, going through the eye gives the best perspective and that's ideal. But as you've shown with Andrew, you can get a feel for the cyclone's symmetry without actually going through the center.

Re: "thoroughbreds"... You're really hung up on that word-- I'm sorry my using it is causing such fixation. For me, a Cat 1 can be a thrill if it's got a nice shape and looks good on radar. When talking structure, a thoroughbred doesn't need to be a major-- and, not every major is a thoroughbred. Katrina and Rita (both Cat 3s) looked terrible on radar as they came ashore, whereas Claudette 2003 (a strong Cat 1) actually looked great. (No, I did not chase those storms.)

Andrew was the most symmetric storm I have experienced and met all the criteria you noted. I did not get into the eye, but was less than 2 miles from the northern edge of the eye, where the winds gusted to a mere 175 mph. My account and others' accounts of Andrew are here:

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13579&highlight=andrew+revisited

Cool-- thanks! Looking forward to reading it! Judging by the radar, Andrew is obviously a standard-bearer with regard to structure-- I've never seen anything look better at landfall.

As the first sentence of that thread notes, I had just posted that account on another forum (EasternWX) which I think you might have already read; considering you have made over 47,000 posts on that forum in less than 4 years.

Rich, are you feeling OK? You seem cranky today. Feel better!

 

[Josh Morgerman]

Cool account of Andrew, Rich! I just read the whole thing. Although you weren't in the eye, it seems that if you were at 160th St, it was a near-bull's-eye hit in terms of getting the best wind.

I wonder if my Dean experience would have been that way if I'd been just a couple of miles further N. <sigh>

 

[Josh Morgerman]

The NHC published the Jimena report today: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-EP132009_Jimena.pdf

It's an excellent report-- thorough and detailed. The landfall intensity near Puerto San Carlos is set at 971 mb/90 kt-- a solid Cat 2, and a very strong landfall for this region.

The highest official wind reading was 61 kt gusting to 79 kt at Ciudad Constitucion. Interestingly, that was measured at 1340Z, while we were still in a lull in Puerto San Carlos, approx. 30 mi to the WSW.

The report cites Jim Edds' pressure reading of 973 mb from Puerto San Carlos, which is cool. It also credits me for that reading, although it wasn't mine-- so I'm going to request that they correct that. However, I did provide Jack Beven with a very detailed log of the conditions during the cyclone's passage-- including the exact timing of the eye's passage-- which I imagine might have been helpful given the lack of radar, satellite, and surface data at the time of landfall.

Anyhoo, I'm glad they decided to call it a landfall in the Puerto San Carlos area. I would have been bummed if they didn't.