CrazyC83 wrote:jinftl wrote:Have there been any memorable storms that lost their inner core to the extent ike did, but then became a major again...either as a landfalling storm a 2nd time or on its way out to sea without landfalling as a resurrected major?
Hugo I believe (struggled to come back after weakening to Cat 2 for 36+ hours leaving Puerto Rico, then restrengthened to Cat 4 in the last 12-18 hours before landfall in South Carolina).
Just a note: Hugo was going through an eyewall replacement while passing the Br. Virgin Islands and until it was some distance north of Puerto Rico -- possibly two in a row, as suggested from a Natural Disaster Studies report with the meteorology team headed by Joe Golden:
"Eye diameters fluctuated during this same [24-hour] period until midday on September 16, when USAF reconnaissance aircraft reported a double, concentric eyewall structure. (The significance of the double eyewall structure for intense hurricanes was noted by Willoughby et al., 1984, for a class of hurricanes, and by Golden in a report on Hurricane Alicia [National research Council, 1983.] See Savage et al., 1984.) The outer eyewall diameter of Hugo measured about 30 km across; the inner eyewall was approximately 18 km across. An unusual feature of the hurricane as it passed through the Lesser Antilles and the Virgin Islands from midday on September 15 through the morning of September 19, when it was northwest of Puerto Rico, was the large fluctuations of the eye's diameter (from 30 to 70 km across)."
The same report notes that PR radar observed trochoidal movement of the small eyewall.
The "large fluctuations of the eye diameter" were possibly articulating the experience of flying through the decaying inner eyewall into the larger one, as I don't believe eyewall replacement cycles were completely understood and documented at that time (Derek and other mets can provide a more robust perspective), although the most current references in the literature were noted in the report.