European/african Hurricanes

[Paranoid]

Hi all. I was wondering if anyone had records of Hurricanes that had formed in the east atlantic/mediterranean and had hit either Europe or Africa? I was reading up about a possible Hurricane (either a Hurricane or Subtropical Cyclone) in 1996 which hit Sardinia. I know sometimes the med gets powerful thunderstorms which can generate gusts of 120+, but not of any tropical systems. There are numerous reports of these "hurricanes" with two possible tropical storms and the afore mentioned possible hurricane in 1996. As for storms which form in the E atlantic and have hit Europe/Africa, i know of Vince and Delta. There was Hurricane Faith in 1966 which hit the faroe islands, with some reports saying still tropical and with Category 2 winds. Could anyone confirm whether Faith was still tropical then? I'm also trying to find out the status of the 1996 hurricane Lili when it hit Britain. If you can find out about all this, then thanks very much.

[Supercell]

I have heard of the Med Sea (possible) hurricane. The sea just is not large enough to develop such a system as a hurricane though. But, I suppose a hybrid system from the Atlantic could have entered the Med Sea and intensified under high SSTs. I remember, one year, the SSTs approaching 35C (I would have thought ridiculously high temps such as 35 would be in the very shallow coastal waters, cooler further out). I haven't got any information or records at hand to help i'm afraid.

Information on Hurricane Faith -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Faith - It appears Hurricane Faith maintained it's tropical status at a very high latitude and sustained it's hurricane force (even after becoming extra-tropical and going on to hit Norway). Impressive storm.

Hurricane Lilli track -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm..._season_map.png - Indicates it was Extra-tropical.

Another very interesting event was the development of a hurricane in the South Atlantic ocean that hit South America. As far as I was made aware at that time it was a first ! There was a real buzz on this forum. Will try and find more info.

Edit - Ahhh...here it is. The Hurricane that should never have been... Hurricane Catarina *spooked* http://www.metoffice.com/sec2/sec2cyclone/catarina.html -

Hope I have helped a little.

Cheers

Edited April 11, 2006 by Supercell

[summer blizzard]

According to the historic chart below, Hurricane Faith hit the Faroe Islands on the same day as it was absorbed by another low into an extra-tropical low, therefore i would say that Hurricane Faith still had tropical charecteristics when it hit the Faroe Islands, if only for a few hours.

[Paranoid]

Wow! Thanks for all this Supercell and Summer Blizzard. I as understood, the med is quite deep in some places, over 5000m deep. I think this storm formed in the East Med.

On the synoptic chart for Hurricane faith, i'm surprised as to how cold it is up there in comparison to where it should have been.

Edited April 12, 2006 by Paranoid

[BrickFielder]

1995 there was a suspected hurricane in the Meditteranean. The fact that it occured in January makes it a bit dubious.

1995 hurricane

Mediterranean tropical cyclones also formed in September 1947, September 1969, January 1982, September 1983, as well as January 1995.

The theory of how it works

[Summer of 95]

There was one called Debbie in 1961 that hit the west coast of Ireland while still officially a hurricane on the UNISYS maps.

[Supercell]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm..._season_map.png - Yes, Debbie hit the county of Mayo in Ireland as a hurricane and continued further north !

http://www.ulster.ac.uk/news/releases/2003/907.html - It did some damage too.

Edited April 12, 2006 by Supercell

[kold weather]

Well firstly the Med. As BrickFielder said the fact it was in January does make it rather hard to believe, however thats not to say at the very least a sub-tropical feature couldn't develop with a shallow warm core like. I suspect a key word is "LIKE". I highly doubt that these sorts of sub-tropical cyclones are exactly the same as there stronger pure tropical systems, but I suspect the process involved is rather similar, if on a smaller and weaker scale. I believe that to get these storms going you need a strong dose of barolinic actvity before eventually the whole process don't need the support of any upper feature and actually becomes a cut-off low with a warm core.

However without any support from the ICTZ, I don't think these sorts of features in the med occur often at all, maybe once a decade.

I must admit to being very intrested in these sorts of features.

Also when talking about eastern Atlantic storms, you cannot forget about the last hurricane season as you said, which had Vince just about reaching landfall in Portugal. In fact it reached hurricane status over waters of just 22C. I think you can probably get a pure tropical cyclone with water temps at 20c porividing its a deep water mass and not shallow. Effectivly what colder water temps do is to reeduce the MPI of a storm. At the time of Vince, the MPI over most of eastern Atalntic was upto category-2.

As we know Vince reached category-1, though its structure looked more like a solid cat-3(Be it a small one!!!) then a 1. Reason for this?

It's low MPI. Based on a regions max potenial intensity (or MPI!) you can usually roughly work out how a deep a storm has to be pressure wise till it becomes annular. For Vince that was category-2.

That's why you'll see so many hurricanes that form further north looking so good for a category-1, while those further south still look a mess. Epsilon went even further and got upto 85mph, with a MPI slightly lower then Vince and if you look at satilite images it did come mighty close to becoming annular, something that usually occurs with powerful cat-5 systems in the deep tropics but because it came so close to its top power, it didn't need to reach cat-5 to get so close to becoming annular.

Anyway this post is just the tiop of the iceberg when it comes to hurricane is suspect, truely intresting things indeed, with prehaps the med storm of 95 and Vince/epsilon being the most intresting subject of all in terms of hurricanes along with the likes of Wilma/Rita/Katrina.

[Supercell]

Hmm...for the 1995 Med Storm, the SSTs were around 22C according to the theory posted by Brick. Although this would seriously hinder anything of any real intensity, a strong sub-tropical storm system could still form. As KW has posted, Vince attained hurricane status at SSTs of 22C. Intriguing stuff.

Edited April 12, 2006 by Supercell

[summer blizzard]

As it did origionally form from a front, is it possible that the storm was sub-Tropical but became tropical?????????

[SMU]

Not Forgetting Vince This Last october seen on the bottom Left....

Steve

[wolves78]

vince was a strange storm to have formed at that time of year it caused a bit of damage aswell

[londonsnow]

Edit - Ahhh...here it is. The Hurricane that should never have been... Hurricane Catarina *spooked* http://www.metoffice.com/sec2/sec2cyclone/catarina.html -

Hope I have helped a little.

Cheers

[Paranoid]

I think it was just because it was in the Southern Hemisphere. The Atlantic stretches all the way from Greenland to around Cape Horn.