Clovis Padoan Filho wrote:KatDaddy wrote:"This system was totally different from anything we've ever seen here," said Laura Rodrigues, a meteorologist at the Santa Catarina state weather bureau. "It may be that it was neither a hurricane nor a subtropical cyclone, but rather something completely new."
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/03 ... storm.html
People, they only know the informations to see that it was a hurricane, after the hurrica already cause damages.... After that, they think that it have a extra tropical " caracteristics " and a hurricane power.
Bye
I understand what you're saying Clovis ... it's something totally brand new to them and yes, it completely caught them offguard ...
the hurricane did make a full transition from a cold-core low to a warm-core one. I've looked at countless loops of the storm and I have absolutely no doubt that the transition was made to a full warm-core hurricane. AN upper-ridge built in in the wake of the ULL which worked its way down to the SFC ... and the SFC low itself flourished under prime conditions even with marginal SST's (which were running as much as 3ºC ABV NORMAL). Basically, the conditions for "Catalina" were as prime and as perfect as can be for development (and extremely rare) as was for Isabel on our side of the Hemisphere last September when it reached Cat 5 Status ...
Regrets --- no way to have a RECON mission to fly into "Catalina" ... but IMHO, there's too much conclusive evidence that "Catalina" indeed was a bonafide hurricane ...

SF