Textbook Perfect or Stranger than we dreamt it?

[opera ghost]

((And only the true 'Phantom fans know I'm not a total fruitcake))

''It's about as textbook a hurricane as you will ever find,'' said Max Mayfield, the hurricane center's director.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6772802.htm
Miami Herald

Discuss.

Given the number of anomalies that Isabel has undergone- from birth to present- COULD this ever be considered a text book hurricane?

a) She formed well east of all other Cat5 storms on record.
b) In the beginning she was not expected to gain speed to Cat5- muchless maintain it for such a long time.
c) She's been a bloody ~nightmare~ to predict.
d) She's slower than average.
e) Two words: Annular Hurricane
f) The quintuple cyclones in her eye at cat5, a set of quadruple vortices at cat4, and the reformation of the quintuples when she regained category 5
g) She's heading for the least hurricane prone stretch of the east coast by all of the models.

Are all other hurricanes anomolies- and Isabel the true textbook 'cane? Or is it just a media soundbyte to reassure the public that they know waht they are doing?

(edited to correct the spelling that I noticed- sorry!)

[azskyman]

I think "classic" might describe her better than "textbook." There is a possibility that this whirling lady will write some new script for future Cat 5 storms...and you started the list already in this post.

azskyman

[PTrackerLA]

I would describe Isabel with the word "odd" before "classic" hurricane. That huge eye and the pentagram is about the strangest thing I've ever seen! lol

[vbhoutex]

She has presented a classic signature for much of her life. I believe that is what Mayfield is referring to.

[JetMaxx]

This hurricane hasn't been difficult to forecast...if you think so, go to the archives of the NHC and check out the 72, 96, and 120 hour forecast positions...plot them on a hurricane chart, and see how close Isabel tracked to them....

The NHC forecast track, even out to 120 hrs has been excellent...and the reason I'm so confident in 3-4 days we'll witness severe hurricane Isabel slam into the coast between North Carolina and Maryland.

As for "textbook hurricane", I think Dr Mayfield is referring to the shape of Isabel...the large and perfectly circular eye. This hurricane is likely what the 1926 Great Miami hurricane, 1928 San Felipe monster, and 1938 Long Island Express resembled.....classic Cape Verde monsters.

[Anonymous]

Is it true that annular hurricanes weaken more slowly over land than do non-annular 'canes?



-Jeb

[JetMaxx]

In all honesty Jeb, I've researched Atlantic hurricanes since age 13...reading everything I could get my hands on....even writing to NHC to obtain technical memoranduns and satellite photos (one forecaster even sent me all of the NHC advisories on hurricane Camille); and until yesterday afternoon, I'd never heard the word "annular hurricane"...and am not exactly sure what they are....I thought a monster hurricane was just that...a monster.

Any large hurricane with a large envelope will weaken more slowly upon landfall or cooler waters, but they'll still weaken. Look how quickly large hurricanes Floyd in 1999 and Opal in 1995 weakened before landfall....and just last year, hurricane Isadore was a very large hurricane that was virtually destroyed while stalled over the Yucatan Peninsula.

[soonertwister]

From the research paper that I read it seemed to say that annular hurricanes maintain their intensity after reaching maximum strength much more than regular hurricanes, not necessarily that they stay stronger longer over land.

From the research the authors concluded that at 72 hours past maximum intensity annular hurricanes averaged 22 knots higher wind speed than the official estimates of the NHC, compared with the NHC slightly overstating the 72 hour wind speed of non-annular hurricanes.

And they did indicate that these hurricanes tend to be in general much more resistant to decay, but made no mention of whether that was just over water, or over either water or land.

If the next recon was to find 140 knot winds, then I think that Isabel could maintain up to 125 knots at landfall, based on the findings of that paper, which is a pretty scary thought indeed.

And JetMaxx, the post containing the link to this article was posted yesterday, I believe. You could probably find it by looking for the oldest recent match for "annular" using the search function.

[JetMaxx]

I'm going to check a couple search engines tomorrow....see what I can learn.

[soonertwister]

Here's the shortcut to Derecho's post that includes the link to the research paper on annular hurricanes:

http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=13713

[JetMaxx]

There isn't much available on annular hurricanes....I just did a quick Google search.

It's a relatively new term (developed within the last two years) for large intense tropical cyclones that have large donut eyes and are very symetrical with little banding...as is the case with Isabel. According to the UCAR article (there are only three hits for the words annular hurricane on the internet right now), hurricane Luis in 1995 and hurricane Edouard in 1996 were both annular hurricanes...and I remember Edouard remained a major hurricane well up into the shipping lanes east of New England.

[JetMaxx]

Thanks soonertwister, but I can't read or access anything in PDF format. Webtv's browser isn't compatible.

I found a couple articles at UCAR to study...and now have a pretty good understanding of why they are different.

[ColdFront77]

All tropical cyclones are difficult to forecast. We hear it every time there are storms in the Atlantic Basin. Some are "easier" than others and the overall setup with Hurricane Isabel has some degree of difficulty with the weather features around the storm.