Tornadic circulations in Tropical Storms and Hurricanes

[ChristianTerry]

I live in Houston and have been interested in Hurricanes since I moved here. I went through Hurricane Ike in 2008 and hear about tornadoes seen in the rain bands that moved through the area. Obviously tornadoes in hurricanes are not nearly as easy to detect as they are in supercells. My question is how does one determine if there is a tornadic circulation inside a hurricane using radar?

 

[Skip Talbot]

The cells may not be discrete with a classic hook echo. However, the radar can still pick up velocity couplets within the cells embedded inside the rain bands, especially if they are close to the radar site.

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/rs/rad/appl/trndo.rxml

 

[Greg Blumberg]

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/training/assorted/schneider_tropical_cylcone_tornadoes.ppt

http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/workshops/soo_2006/tctorns2006.ppt

Pulled that up after a quick search. Looks pretty solid to me and could be useful for you.

I'd say that from a quick skim of these Powerpoints, that it's not so much the radar that will help you detect them, but rather knowing the environment. One interesting thing that stood out to me was the existence of a boundary of some sort in some of the tropical cyclone tornado cases. I'd say that identifying boundaries are a great place to start as they are often a common atmospheric feature connected to the production of tornadoes.

Good luck!