2005 Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Reports Discussion Thread

[Andrew92]

No surprises that it got upgraded. However, at first when I saw that it still said "Tropical Storm Cindy" on the main page, I thought that implied that Cindy was not upgraded. Glad Derek beat me to the post, as I would have blown it!

-Andrew92

[cycloneye]

No surprises that it got upgraded. However, at first when I saw that it still said "Tropical Storm Cindy" on the main page, I thought that implied that Cindy was not upgraded. Glad Derek beat me to the post, as I would have blown it!

-Andrew92

It took around three hours after the report was released but they haved changed the header of Cindy to Hurricane.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/2005atlan.shtml?

[Derek Ortt]

no doubt that Cindy was a hurricane

Also interesting to note that it caused $320 million in damage. Just another forgotton storm of the 2005 season, even though it hit the exact same areas that Katrina wiped out

[jasons2k]

Cindy has been upgraded to hurricane at the report.Any comments about this upgrade that many said it would occur.

Yep, no surprises here either. I was pretty confident she was a Hurricane since landfall. Some of the offshore reports were pretty hard to discount.

[Andrew92]

This may be slightly off-topic, but this is the third storm in history named Cindy to have made landfall in the U.S. as a C1 hurricane with winds at 75 mph. The others were in 1959 in South Carolina and in 1963 in Texas.

Crazy!

-Andrew92

[cycloneye]

The reports are comming fast as 5 this week haved been released today Cindy and Bret.Only 13 reports are left to be released but I am waiting more for Emily,Rita,Stan and Vince.The Tropical Storm Bret report is only 7 pages long as it was a very short lived storm.

[HurricaneBill]

no doubt that Cindy was a hurricane

Also interesting to note that it caused $320 million in damage. Just another forgotton storm of the 2005 season, even though it hit the exact same areas that Katrina wiped out

Do you think they should have posted hurricane warnings for Cindy?

Don't they usually post a hurricane warning if there is a chance a storm may reach hurricane status prior to landfall?

[Derek Ortt]

I do not know why there was not at least a Hurricane Watch posted when winds reached 60KT, 9 hours before landfall. Almost always, they are,e specially whe the public advisories say further intensification is possible and Cindy could become a hurricane

[Pearl River]

The only issue I have with Cindy's report is they placed Grand Isle in Plaquemines Parish. It's located in Jefferson Parish.

[StormScanWx]

My new revised list of wants (with Cindy taken down! Glad to see the upgrade )

1) Emily
2) Vince
3) Beta

[Audrey2Katrina]

The only issue I have with Cindy's report is they placed Grand Isle in Plaquemines Parish. It's located in Jefferson Parish.

The only issue I have is that the same doppler radar in Slidell that was NOT considered worthy of citing in the Katrina report, WAS cited in the Cindy report while the storms were at similar distances from those measurements. That said, I found the Cindy report to be quite an interesting read, and you are correct, PearlRiver, (not that you didn't know that already) Grand Isle is across Barataria Bay and in Jefferson, the reference to landfall being some nautical miles southWEST of Grand Isle, and in Plaquemines has me baffled.

A2K

[jazzfan1247]

The only issue I have is that the same doppler radar in Slidell that was NOT considered worthy of citing in the Katrina report, WAS cited in the Cindy report while the storms were at similar distances from those measurements. That said, I found the Cindy report to be quite an interesting read, and you are correct, PearlRiver, (not that you didn't know that already) Grand Isle is across Barataria Bay and in Jefferson, the reference to landfall being some nautical miles southWEST of Grand Isle, and in Plaquemines has me baffled.

A2K

Actually, the doppler radar in Slidell WAS considered worthy...it was used to confirm the presence of 130-135 kt flight-level winds in the following quote: "NWS Slidell WSR-88D radar data confirmed the strength of these flight-level winds, but the center of the hurricane was much too distant for the radar to provide concurrent near-surface wind estimates close to the eye."

However, as it says, the radar couldn't judge surface winds, but it was used to confirm the flight-level winds, which would've indicated Cat 4 surface winds...BUT the 90% reduction factor was not in place as mentioned in the report.

Now, if you read the Cindy report, it never says the Slidell radar was used to judge surface winds either. It says: "The radar indicated a narrow but relatively lengthy swath of spotty Doppler velocities of at least 71 kt ALOFT in the eastern semicircle of Cindy's circulation." So, similar to in Katrina's case, the radar was not used to judge SURFACE winds, for the same reason...it was too far away. However, it was determined that the 90% reduction factor DID apply in Cindy's case, based on SFMR and dropsonde data before that last period prior to landfall, and based on the mentioned oil platform observation.

So indeed, the dopper radar data was used in the same manner for both storms, but different conclusions were drawn because the reduction factor was not the same for both.

[cycloneye]

This is what I wanted to see,great discussions about the reports.Let's continue to do it this way and all will benefit from the analysis and discussions as we can learn many things from them.

[Pearl River]

Using a standard reduction factor of 0.90 yields an approximate surface wind speed of 60 kt, which compares well with the Doppler radar surface wind speed estimate of 60 kt for that area.

Actually jazzfan, the NHC did use the doppler radar to estimate surface winds in Cindy. The above was taken from Cindy's report.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Thank you, PearlRiver, that was EXACTLY my point. Duplicity of this sort hardly lends consistency, much less credibility to the contention that Slidell's radar couldn't be used for surface winds in Katrina, but could be used for Cindy at nearly the same distance, and over approximately the same region.

A2K

[jazzfan1247]

Using a standard reduction factor of 0.90 yields an approximate surface wind speed of 60 kt, which compares well with the Doppler radar surface wind speed estimate of 60 kt for that area.

Actually jazzfan, the NHC did use the doppler radar to estimate surface winds in Cindy. The above was taken from Cindy's report.

Sorry, I kinda misspoke here. What I meant was that doppler radar was not used to DIRECTLY measure surface winds, because it was too far away. Now, they did ESTIMATE surface winds indirectly, based on reduction factors off of the winds ALOFT the radar DIRECTLY estimated. And this process was done for BOTH Cindy and Katrina...there was no difference in how the radar data was used.

And another thing is that when they say "Doppler radar surface wind speed estimate of 60 kt for the area", they do NOT mean direct Doppler data, they mean the surface wind speed derived from the assumed 90% reduction from the ACTUAL radar data of wind speeds ALOFT. The wording NHC used might've made this a bit confusing, but from the sentences before in the report, it is clear that this is what they really mean.

[jazzfan1247]

Thank you, PearlRiver, that was EXACTLY my point. Duplicity of this sort hardly lends consistency, much less credibility to the contention that Slidell's radar couldn't be used for surface winds in Katrina, but could be used for Cindy at nearly the same distance, and over approximately the same region.

A2K

Again, if you read both reports carefully, you will note that Slidell's radar was used to measure winds ALOFT in BOTH Cindy and Katrina. In neither storm was the radar used to DIRECTLY measure surface winds, simply because it is not possible from that distance. Therefore, the same data was collected in both storms, and hence the SAME process (deriving reduction factors) was used to estimate surface winds in both Cindy and Katrina.

Surface winds were NOT directly measured by the radar in both Cindy and Katrina, hence there is no inconsistency by the NHC in its use of Slidell's radar data.

[Audrey2Katrina]

In one they DID use the Slidell radar to estimate surface winds with Cindy, and in the other they did not. That, in my opinion IS an inconsistency.

A2K

[jazzfan1247]

In one they DID use the Slidell radar to estimate surface winds with Cindy, and in the other they did not. That, in my opinion IS an inconsistency.

A2K

This is completely false.

From the KATRINA report: "NWS Slidell WSR-88D radar data confirmed the strength of these flight-level winds, but the center of the hurricane was much too distant for the radar to provide concurrent near-surface wind estimates close to the eye."

Now, how is this NOT using Slidell radar in Katrina?

[jazzfan1247]

NHC used the Slidell radar in the same manner for both Cindy and Katrina. They used it to measure wind speeds ALOFT, and then use these aloft wind speeds to estimate corresponding surface winds using a determined reduction factor. The type of radar data used by NHC is the same for both storms.