crimsone

Mission 07 currently leavin Curaçao and heading for Maria. Personally, I'm leaving the land of wakefulness and heading to sleep.

Mission 05 is bugging out. Mission 06 has taken some time out from travelling in the shape of a penis to drop down to the south of the hurricane and is currently having a look. If we're lucky, it might try to take a pass or two at the eye. I still want to know what these missions that drop sondes at regular intervals in advance of a storm's path are gathering data for.

I don't think it's going to have time before landfall... which is no bad thing, to be fair. It's going to be pushing for sub-900 intensity though. That said... Latest VDM: Looks like the pressure plateaued there for the last hour or so... or there's an anomalous reading from the sonde, but that'd be unusual.

Pressure down to 906 according to the latest HDObs (905.7 mb). SW eyeway has 10 sec winds of 155.4 mph. What I'm shocked at is just how consistent these winds are right around the eye.

Well, this is all getting a bit serious... Dvorak: Funktop: In particular, note the growth of that massive green band of highest intensity in the funktop, and the matching grey band in the Dvorak. Neither of these bands existed a few hours back.

Recon literally flying into the eyewall right at this moment! Oh, the joys of modern technology! Wish I'd had this 12 years back when I was watching Wilma, but Maria mostly makes up for it I think.

*nods* Fair enough. I just can't find any record of it, flagged or otherwise. Not saying that you're not seeing it of course... just that I can't see it, and I'm interested.

Not sure where you got that from? Can't find that anywhere in the data.

Recon (Mission 05) is heading in for a (somewhat unusual) 5th pass at the eye as we speak. Can't imagine this mission has a hell of a lot of fuel left at this point, so it may well be the last... or we may get a 6th afterwards, if we're very lucky. Mission 06 is drawing a penis with it's flight path, as seems to be a thing that Recon does with one mission per day, and as such isn't going into Maria. (OK, not really a penis, but I've seen them do this a good few times now, and the flight path by the end looks vaguely like a penis, and nobody can tell me otherwise!). If anybody knows what these missions are for exactly, I'd be very interested to know! In any case, this might be the last vortex data of the evening.

If PR were a needle, then Maria is threading it.

It's got a fair rate in the forward momentum too, minimising time over land. I full well expect her to drop to Cat 4 by the time she's over the other side - it's just physics after all. Not convinced her organisation will be affected too badly though.

Official intensity set at 910mb, with a 9 mile closed eye per the latest VDM.

As you'd expect of an intensifying hurricane at this strength... Running only ever so slightly north of the forecast track at the moment. If the NW winds don't get you, the SE precipitation will!

174.9 MpH surface wind just found by recon in the northern eyewall. Just looking at the HDObs, and they've found 180.7 MpH flt winds, and extrapolate a pressure of 909.3mb

Getting kind of annoyed at idiots in youtube video chats advocating the dropping of nuclear bombs into hurricanes. It isn't a good idea. It doesn't work, and the only weather event in the North Atlantic more disastrous than a Cat 5 Hurricane would be a radioactive Cat 5 hurricane. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

*slight* wobble to the north. Nothing to phone home about on its own. Happily churning away en-route to death and destruction, aimed right for PR's most populated areas. http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/floaters/15L/html5-swir-short.html

Judging by her forward motion and continuing intensification, she has a very good chance of going sub-900mb. Interestingly though, Recon isn't seeing (or at least isn't mentioning) an outer eye at the moment... but never the less reported a closed eye that's 10 miles wide - twice as large as earlier. Max Flt winds observed at 148kt. They caught a 160 MpH 10 sec sustained sfc wind on the way out of the eye, in the SW eyewall.

So, going by the latest recon fix of center and the most distant SFMR surface wind along the flight path to reach a minimum of 73 mph... ... it would appear that hurricane winds extend out from 17.550N 63.217W for about 118km to 16.767N 63.967W. In laymans terms, this perfect storm has 73 MpH sustained surface winds (Cat 1 hurricane strength) extending out from the center on a radius of 73 miles, give or take the differences in each quadrant.

Between 1752z and 1942z it dropped 4mb, so it's certainly on course. It appears (though you never quite know) that recon is heading in again from the NE shortly, so we should soon be able to see what the trend looks like.

'Tis a sad fact, but you can't indulge in a fascination with hurricanes during the atlantic season without, alas, having to temper it a little with the morbid certainty of death and destruction. On the one hand, there's a certain beauty and perfection in the strongest of these heat engines - even more so when you consider that each is dealing more energy than a good number of hydrogen bombs, and moreover still when you consider that these storms are probably essential to an earth climate conducive to life, both at the tropics and the mid latitudes. On the other hand, with a 5 mile eye (and I fancy it might even be tightening slightly), it's basically a mega-tornado of death and destruction headed straight for civilisation. On the plus side, at least the south of Puerto Rico has a relatively deep ocean shelf, which should help minimise the surge height. PR's only hope is that it somehow manages to take a big gulp of the dry air to the NNW, but I don't see it happening

Also, is it just me... or did she just top out the grey chart in the Dvorak image?

There certainly haven't been many hurricanes that have achieved a second anti-cyclonic loop. They don't usually last long enough at that latitude, for a start.

Today is not a good day to be on Puerto Rico. I find myself wondering whether that forecast Cat 4 landfall might be more tha product of hope than of science. And here she is making her way to the top of the funktop chart in the last couple of frames of the loop...

I remember watching Wilma quite well... and being in utter awe of her eye becoming tighter with each ERC before reaching that incredible 2 mile diameter. The risk of a pinhole eye is, of course, particularly rapid intensification, as seems to be happening here. On the plus side, a pinhole eye means that she's potentially vulnerable to prolonged ERC... or not... time will tell.

That was about 50 mins ago... A closed eye just 5 miles wide. This doesn't feel good