#33 Postby KatDaddy » Wed Oct 19, 2005 6:31 am
From the WeatherUnderground Jeff Master's Blog:
Posted By: JeffMasters at 10:59 AM GMT on October 19, 2005
There has never been a hurricane like Wilma before. With an unbelievable round of intensification that saw the pressure drop 85 mb in just 12 hours, Wilma smashed the all-time record for lowest pressure in an Atlantic hurricane this morning. The 4 am hurricane hunter report put the pressure at 884 mb from a dropsonde, and the meteorologist reported an even lower 881 mb pressure extrapolated from 10,000 feet flight altitude. This easily bests the previous record of 888 mb set in Hurricane Gilbert of 1988. The eye of Wilma during this round of intense deepening oscillated between 2 and 4 nautical miles, and the area of hurricane force winds only covered an area up to 15 miles from the center. This is an incredibly compact, amazingly intense hurricane, the likes of which has never been seen. The Hurricane Season of 2005 keeps topping itself with new firsts, and now boasts three of the five most intense hurricanes of all time--Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.
I'll be back with a much more detailed blog later this morning, when I've had time to digest these events. I'll talk about what it was like to be the flight meteorologist on the Hurricane Gilbert flight that set the previous record for most intense Atlantic hurricane.
We're living history this year, everybody, this is a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane season.
Jeff Masters
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HOLY CRAP! 
