Hurricane Faith (1966)

[Sainsbo]

Could someone with more knowledge than me on the subject please explain to me how Hurricane Faith was able to avoid becoming extratropical, and still be classed as a category 2 hurricane at such high latitudes? From what I can find it became extratropical at around 62N, and had category 1/2 windspeeds near the UK, which seems almost impossible with the sea temperatures you would expect in that region.

 

[Somerset Squall]

Mmm, always puzzled me too this one. At a guess I would say one contributing factor was the forward speed of Faith, which meant it managed to speed a long way north while completing the extratropical transition process. Other than that I'm not sure.

[summer blizzard]

Like Katia it was not entirely tropical but undergoing extratropical transition.

[Sainsbo]

Thankyou both for your help. That helps to understand some of it, but I'm still curious how unlike Katia, it was able to have sustained windspeeds of a category two hurricane over cool waters. I guess it is quite possible that since it was such a long time ago, it may have already turned extratropical, or not have been as strong as the image shows due to bad forecasts and the technology not being as good as it needed to be?

[Somerset Squall]

The HURDAT re-analysis project will get to Faith soon, it'll be interesting to see the report.

[Sainsbo]

Indeed it will.

 

It seems that a few years earlier, Hurricane Debbie was a similar type storm where it is unclear whether it got to Ireland before becoming extratropical, and this storm was also moving very fast. I guess it depends if you class a hurricane as tropical until extratropical transition is finished, or stop classing it as a hurricane when the extratropical transition starts. There's not much doubt that both of these storms had probably started transition, but it is still quite remarkable how it could be classed as a category two hurricane up to the Faroe Islands.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Sainsbo