Frances Advisories

[Thunder44]

Ed Rapport from TPC said a few mins ago on CNN that the storm was showing mixed signals, that it looked it was strengthening on satellite images, but the recon still shows weakening. So may be that storm may organizing but it may be taking some time to repsond to it.

[snoopj]

CNN today was predicting that Frances would cause $35,000,000,000 in damage. That's right, 35 BILLION dollars. Needless to say, I think they will be wrong.

Actually, I was in the Milwaukee airport and saw that last night....back when Frances was churning at 140-145mph sustained winds. Who knows...but that estimate was made at least yesterday when she was at a pretty high intensity.

--snoopj

[nccoastalgirl]

I for one am grateful to all the people who post their thoughts on these boards. They may not be professionals, but they know more than me. I don't blindly read them as take them as something that is for certain, but I appreciate hearing different viewpoints.

The one exception is the guy who insists that it will strike in the carolinas, that's getting a bit old.

Thanks to all for taking the time to help out us Floridians, it means a lot just having a board available for all this stuff.

I have NEVER heard him INSIST that Frances was going to strike "the carolinas". Never. He is not alone in his opinion of a more northerly track than the official forecast. Just because it's a minority opinion, doesn't mean that everyone has the right to treat him so incredibly rudely. You may be grateful for the tone on this board. I am not. Links that help support ncweatherwizard's "amatuer" forecasts follow below:

http://www.weatherunderground.com/tropi ... model.html

http://www.millenniumweather.com/tropical/index.html

If this discussion board, then all opinions should be discussed. Not mocked. The tone on this board sucks. Period. Agree with the majority or you will be obliterated and sent off into exile.

[Sanibel]

He's probably referring to the west side filling back in with round convection.

Truth is the CDO has lightened and the pressure risen, foretelling weakening...


The first shower just passed over from a weak band cumulous here in SW Florida. Just enough to wet the tin. Otherwise a bright overhead upper high blue sky is shining...

[Guest]

http://www.weatherunderground.com/tropi ... model.html

http://www.millenniumweather.com/tropical/index.html

If this discussion board, then all opinions should be discussed. Not mocked. The tone on this board sucks. Period. Agree with the majority or you will be obliterated and sent off into exile.

What really sucks is that the Moderators on the site sit back and let it happen. AirForceMet's comments were completely out of line...especially since so many people look to him/her for advice. He/she should be ashamed.

[charleston_hugo_veteran]

[bfez1]

41!!! YIKES!

[krisj]

That has got to be a record! I would never have guessed with as far away as Frances was that we would get that kind of weather here!

[charleston_hugo_veteran]

That has got to be a record! I would never have guessed with as far away as Frances was that we would get that kind of weather here!

yea it is....they said the most since 1994!

[TyphoonTim]

Wow, that's awful! My prayers are with everyone affected. Looks like we dodged a bullet in the Atlanta area. Frances' center passed nearly overhead instead of further west, which kept the worst of the weather mostly to the east.

[CFLCaneWatcher]

That is INCREDIBLE!!!!

[BUD]

did any of them hit the coast

[USCG_Hurricane_Watcher]

Hugo Vet - How'd the Mt. Pleasant area fare this past week?

[Wthrman13]

Hey folks,

I'm finally back from a week-long excursion to Florida to intercept Hurricane Frances. As some of you may know, I went as part of the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR) team with the Doppler on Wheels (DOW) trucks. Our goal was to gather dual-doppler data of a landfalling major hurricane, and this involved getting the trucks as close as possible or even into the eye of the storm as it approached. They have done this in years past with Hurricanes Isabel (I was part of that one too), Lili, Georges, Fran, and a couple others I can't remember off the top of my head. One of the interesting features seen in hurricanes with these high-resolution radar observations is the presence of horizontal rolls of convection in the boundary layer flow of the hurricane. These rolls are oriented parallel to the wind direction and are associated with extreme wind gusts at the surface. These wind streaks were particularly well defined in Frances and could be easily seen on the velocity display of our radars.

Anyway, I'll try to be brief on the recap. After spending 3-4 days driving to the coast and scouting out good deployment sites, we finally deployed around noon on Saturday as the outer bands of Frances were already affecting the coast. DOW 2, which I was in, deployed right along the coast (on an elevated location well above even Cat 5 storm surge) about 4 miles south of Fort Pierce, while DOW 3 deployed just south of Fort Pierce. The landfall process was excruciatingly slow. I estimate that we had winds sustained at or above hurricane force for ~6 hours before the eye finally breached our location. The eyewall finally approached late that evening around 8 p.m. or so, and we proceeded to get battered by winds easily reaching 100 mph at times for a good 3 hours. By that time it was so hard to keep track of time. It seemed the eye would never reach us. I have a spectacular radar image of the eye just after we entered it, which I will post once I get a chance to download all of my images. The radar trucks , which weigh ~ 23000 lbs., stood up very well to the winds, and they have been known to stand up quite well to even Cat 4 winds, so I was not in the least bit worried about that.

Both DOW 2 and DOW 3 were equipped with sonic anemometers. However, DOW 3's was damaged during the deployment process by an overhanging tree branch, and despite our best efforts, which involved send ing individuals out into the hurricane to try to repair/ rewire it, we could not get it to work. DOW 2's anemometer was working, but unfortunately was not on a mast, so we were getting blockage from the radar dish, and we don't believe our wind speeds were representative (they were significantly lower than winds we were measuring at 10 m with the Doppler radar). The highest winds we were measuring with our radars were ~ 65 m/s at an altitude of 100 m (about 330 ft) above the ground, which is about 145 mph! Closer to the radar, and thus, closer to the ground, around 10 m above the ground, we were seeing some 50 m/s (112 mph) and higher winds. It's unclear whether these winds were sustained or gusts, and CSWR plans on doing some post-processing of the wind measurements from successive scans to determine this. If these measurements turn out to be of "sustained" winds, it could be argued that Frances was actually a minimal Cat 3 at landfall. This is why we were so upset that the anemometer on DOW 3 was broken, because it WAS on a raisable mast, and we could have measured the 10 m winds that way and verified it against the radar observations. The NHC in fact called us during landfall, asking us what kind of winds we were experiencing. This is a case where a single anemometer observation could have made the difference between the entire classification of a hurricane at landfall. But again, we will see what the analysis of the radar data shows.

Personally, I think that Frances was a borderline Cat 2/Cat 3 at landfall, and I don't see any real reason to change the official landfall intensity, because at that point it becomes academic, anyway.

All in all, it was a heck of ride, and certainly beat the pants off of Isabel. However, when we finally did get into the eye, it was still rather windy, not calm like Isabel's eye was, but at least it had stopped raining. DOW 2 got into the northern section of the eye, while DOW 3 actually never got into the eye, but scraped the northern eyewall the whole way. Let me tell you, we (and our bladders) were all happy to be done with that western eyewall!

[charleston_hugo_veteran]

Hugo Vet - How'd the Mt. Pleasant area fare this past week?

They fared well compared to the midlands! Mt. Pleasant has three huge debris piles at the landfill from the separate storms...
Along with the tornadoes we had numerous microburst .... 3 people are also dead....

[HugoCameandLeft]

I drove home to Pinopolis this past weekend - The debris piles there are sadly still everywhere as the gov hasn't decided who should pay. Seems ridiculous and dangerous to me, as each branch, tree, etc becomes a projectile in storms like yesterday.

For an area that hasn't really taken a "hard" shot, it sure had quite a bit of debris. Sadly yesterday didn't help.

[USCG_Hurricane_Watcher]

Thanks for the info. Sorry to hear about the three...I'm so detached from the "local happenings" since I've been xferred to MD...I remember walking downstairs two weeks ago, turning on FOX news and hearing Mayor Riley discussing weather (Gaston) and knew this wasn't good...

Hang in there...SC's been pretty lucky so far...

V/R,
USCG_Hurricane_Watcher
(Another HUGO vet)

[ilmc172pilot]

Sounds like a lot of fun, glad you made it back safely

[CaptinCrunch]

Sounds like you had a AWESOME time

[tallbunch]

we had 2 reported on Hilton head alone