Hurricane Charley Video

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Bocadude85
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Hurricane Charley Video

#1 Postby Bocadude85 » Sun May 21, 2017 10:03 pm

I came across this video on YouTube of Hurricane Charley and was just awe struck by the power of the wind in the video. Does any one have any guesses of what the max winds in this video are?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_2293753811&feature=iv&src_vid=yQbkPgbxafQ&v=y76zDoDQkbQ
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#2 Postby Hurricaneman » Sun May 21, 2017 10:10 pm

Sustained of 150 and gusts of 180 mph
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#3 Postby TheAustinMan » Sun May 21, 2017 11:05 pm

I've never bore witness to winds of that strength, so I have no ability to visually estimate those winds, but I might be able to provide some insight based on the plentiful data involving Charley. The timestamp on the video would suggest the film was from the left back quadrant of the storm, though the fact that the RaceTrac at the beginning of the clip is the same one depicted here (destroyed in Charley's right front, northeastern quadrant) suggests that the timestamp is off by about 30 minutes, so the video's strongest winds do actually depict the northeastern quadrant of Charley.

There's another clip from the same cameraman - Rob Jones - not included in that particular YouTube link in which he relays his position as "just north of the Peace River on US 41." After digging around on Google Maps for a bit I found that the location of the strongest winds in the video (from 0:14 to 4:20 or so) were taken from the McDonalds near the Charlotte Town Apartments (most of the video is looking south at the apartments so we see the east to west winds of the northeast quadrant blowing right across the film).

Going off of archived radar data alone, the storm-relative velocity for that position topped out at around 95 mph, with the base velocity data roaring in at 111 mph at the height of the storm. About 2.19 miles to the southeast on the other side of the Peace River at Charlotte Regional Medical Center, a gust of 172 mph was reported. At the Charlotte County Airport about 5.5 miles to the southeast, a gust of 160 mph was reported. These measurements were reported by Charlotte County emergency management officials, though NOAA aerial surveys tenatively indicated these were overestimates as the damage was indicative of gusts in the 125 to 145 mph range. This agrees with slightly lower reports of 112 and 127 mph gusts at Punta Gorda. According to their data, the gusts in the video lie in the 130-140 mph range. (The gusts in the infamous RaceTrac video are located just inside the 140mph+ contour). As for sustained winds, preliminary wind swath analyses from NOAA/HRD suggest 1-minute sustained winds at the video's location were in the 110-120 mph range, which would indicate intense Category 3 winds.

Gust swaths from NOAA aerial survey:
Image
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#4 Postby Bocadude85 » Mon May 22, 2017 12:53 pm

TheAustinMan wrote:I've never bore witness to winds of that strength, so I have no ability to visually estimate those winds, but I might be able to provide some insight based on the plentiful data involving Charley. The timestamp on the video would suggest the film was from the left back quadrant of the storm, though the fact that the RaceTrac at the beginning of the clip is the same one depicted here (destroyed in Charley's right front, northeastern quadrant) suggests that the timestamp is off by about 30 minutes, so the video's strongest winds do actually depict the northeastern quadrant of Charley.

There's another clip from the same cameraman - Rob Jones - not included in that particular YouTube link in which he relays his position as "just north of the Peace River on US 41." After digging around on Google Maps for a bit I found that the location of the strongest winds in the video (from 0:14 to 4:20 or so) were taken from the McDonalds near the Charlotte Town Apartments (most of the video is looking south at the apartments so we see the east to west winds of the northeast quadrant blowing right across the film).

Going off of archived radar data alone, the storm-relative velocity for that position topped out at around 95 mph, with the base velocity data roaring in at 111 mph at the height of the storm. About 2.19 miles to the southeast on the other side of the Peace River at Charlotte Regional Medical Center, a gust of 172 mph was reported. At the Charlotte County Airport about 5.5 miles to the southeast, a gust of 160 mph was reported. These measurements were reported by Charlotte County emergency management officials, though NOAA aerial surveys tenatively indicated these were overestimates as the damage was indicative of gusts in the 125 to 145 mph range. This agrees with slightly lower reports of 112 and 127 mph gusts at Punta Gorda. According to their data, the gusts in the video lie in the 130-140 mph range. (The gusts in the infamous RaceTrac video are located just inside the 140mph+ contour). As for sustained winds, preliminary wind swath analyses from NOAA/HRD suggest 1-minute sustained winds at the video's location were in the 110-120 mph range, which would indicate intense Category 3 winds.

Gust swaths from NOAA aerial survey:
Image


Is the map you posted in knots or MPH? I would assume Kts because those gusts seem awfully low for a strong Cat 4 hurricane.
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#5 Postby TheAustinMan » Mon May 22, 2017 3:09 pm

Bocadude85 wrote:Is the map you posted in knots or MPH? I would assume Kts because those gusts seem awfully low for a strong Cat 4 hurricane.


Those are gusts in MPH. The data comes from aerial surveys of the data with a +/- 15 mph error confidence. Remember, while Hurricane Charley was a powerful hurricane, its core was also exceptionally compact. Just going a few hundred feet closer to the core of the system could mean a 10-20 mph increase in peak gusts. It's likely that the strongest winds in Charley were over a small area over the Peace River where friction with the surface would reduce winds compared to bare land. From the aerial wind mapping report:

The strongest winds were estimated to be in a small area at the sound end of North Captiva
Island, near where the barrier island was breached along an approximately 400 yard stretch. A
second wind maximum was estimated to be in Charlotte Harbor and shoreline areas of Port
Charlotte and Punta Gorda (See Appendix B). Overall, a 12 mile wide swath of winds gusting
over 100 MPH swept inland with the hurricane’s core. Wind gusts estimated at 120 MPH
progressed inland to near Arcadia. Wind gusts to near 100 MPH persisted into the Orlando area,
with gusts near 80 MPH still occurring as the cyclone’s center exited Florida near Daytona
Beach.


The location of the winds in the video were about 0.6 miles west of the Peace River, where the winds would be coming from. That's enough land to slow down Charley's fierce 180 mph estimated gusts by quite a clip (though, clearly, they were still damaging and intense). Unfortunately, anemometers in position to possibly measure these most intense winds probably failed. As the National Hurricane Center noted, "as usual, there were no official surface anemometer measurements of wind speeds even approaching the intensity estimate [of 150 mph] near the landfall location." The highest official gust measurement was 97 kt / 111 mph at Punta Gorda, and that anemometer failed during the storm, and it's likely stronger winds would have occurred there.

Gust swath across Florida from Charley:
Image

Note how gusts up to 100 mph were carried well inland, through Orlando with gusts up to 90 mph being felt straight to Florida's east coast, while the stronger, 120 mph+ gusts remained limited to the Peace River and adjacent areas (which is probably no coincidence).
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#6 Postby tatertawt24 » Mon May 22, 2017 3:58 pm

It's kind of amazing how resilient palm trees are. You'd think from their flimsy appearance they'd be the first to snap, but in reality they're the last ones standing. That makes the picture on the left after Andrew even more impressive:

Image
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#7 Postby Kazmit » Mon May 22, 2017 6:25 pm

tatertawt24 wrote:It's kind of amazing how resilient palm trees are. You'd think from their flimsy appearance they'd be the first to snap, but in reality they're the last ones standing. That makes the picture on the left after Andrew even more impressive:

Image


Palm trees grow in tropical locations, and therefore are adapted to hurricanes, so they're basically "designed" to not break. It is incredible how much they can bend, they can withstand a lot of wind before breaking.
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#8 Postby beoumont » Tue May 23, 2017 5:01 am

Shortly after the Racetrack video was shot chaser Theiss estimated the sustained winds at 135 mph. He might have changed this figure in afterthought; but looking at his video I would agree with his first estimate. Personally driving by and looking at the area the next day I also felt his first estimate was quite good.

The most complete damage I observed was within a block or two of Charlotte Harbor on both the north an south sides of the water, near US 41. The Holiday Inn on the south side just west of US 41, where Brad Riley and myself checked into three hours before landfall, had many sections almost completely flattened We went south a few miles before landfall and missed the worst of it; but seeing later that the 2nd story room we checked into had collapsed into the lower floor tempered our "disappointment" to some extent. My estimate, based on the damage, in that area was 145 mph sustained.

Jim Leonard and Andy Dressler, stationed at the Hospital parking garage about two miles north of the water, had winds of 130-135 mph in gusts; which I included long segments of in the DVD we produced "Hurricane Charley - As it Happened."
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#9 Postby SouthFloridian92 » Wed May 24, 2017 5:33 pm

I'll always remember Charley because he arrived on Friday the 13th.
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#10 Postby gatorcane » Wed May 24, 2017 8:58 pm

Charley was supposed to be Tampa's storm. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. Lived in Clearwater in the Tampa area at that time. Thought Tampa's hurricane drought had finally come to an end until Charley veered more NE instead of NNE in the SE Gulf rather unexpectedly. Something like that cutting through St. Pete/Clearwater/Tampa would create an unbelievable amount of damage and not all because of wind but because of the incredible storm surge that would result in an even more densely populated area.
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#11 Postby p1nheadlarry » Tue May 30, 2017 2:39 pm

That gas station at the very beginning is where Mike Theiss recorded the peak of Charley. He estimates sustained 125 mph with the strongest gust in the video (around 3 minutes in after he cleans the lens) over 150.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unV5KcSrY-I&t=20s

Here's another really good shoot from Chris Collura from Punta Gorda. Peaks at around 3:45 after he says "c'mon, I want the eye"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd5-uglb-fg
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#12 Postby JPmia » Tue May 30, 2017 9:00 pm

I wish we had a page on here to bring all the Hurricane videos in one place.
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#13 Postby TheStormExpert » Tue May 30, 2017 9:28 pm

Hurricane Charley was your classic example of a small but mighty storm! Was basically a super-sized tornado which brought bad conditions to a small confined area and if you were just more than a couple miles away from the center you basically got spared from the worst. Just like Andrew he sure intensified rapidly on approach to Florida, unlike some that are saying storms that approach the U.S. and Florida as of recent have weakened considerably(which I disagree with, look at Matthew for instance) he did the contrary.

Btw, it's hard to believe the only tress still standing are palm tress and coconut palms. Back during either Frances or Jeanne I lost a coconut palm just from winds that were probably not even close to what Charley unleashed. Of course it wasn't maintained either prior to the twin hurricanes that slammed us three weeks apart.
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Re: Hurricane Charley Video

#14 Postby p1nheadlarry » Wed May 31, 2017 8:45 am

TheStormExpert wrote:Hurricane Charley was your classic example of a small but mighty storm! Was basically a super-sized tornado which brought bad conditions to a small confined area and if you were just more than a couple miles away from the center you basically got spared from the worst. Just like Andrew he sure intensified rapidly on approach to Florida, unlike some that are saying storms that approach the U.S. and Florida as of recent have weakened considerably(which I disagree with, look at Matthew for instance) he did the contrary.


Add Hugo to that list. And intense storms aside there are quite a few examples of storms forming near the coast and intensify up until landfall. I guess people mainly refer to the classic CV road trippers.
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