25 of March 2004
26 of March 2004
27 of March 2004
28 of March Landfall at Brazil
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/res ... lcane.html
Great sat loop of Catarina first known south Atlantic Hurricane.
This storm was called "Catarina" by some meteorologists, since it made landfall south of the Island of Santa Catarina, Brazil.
This may have been the first hurricane observed in the Southern Atlantic Ocean--it certainly had a well defined eye and eyewall.
The US National Hurrican Center classified this system as a category 1 "hurricane". However, this intensity was discounted by Brazilian meteorologists, who only rated it at perhaps tropical storm intensity. No aircraft flew into this storm to measure central pressure and winds.
The closest surface reporting stations for which we received data were SBFL (Florianopolis) and SBPA (Porto Alegre). The maximum sustained wind speed reported on SBFL hourly observations was 17 knots (19.6 mph) at 28/0700Z and SBPA reported 23 knots (26.5 mph) at 28/1600Z. It looked like the eye made landfall somewhere between these two sites.





