altitude and wind speed

#1 Postby **docjoe** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 9:38 pm

There has been some discussion recently about vertical evacuation and it got me to thinking. I live in Santa Rosa county Florida. We have elevations between 100-200 feet within 10 - 15 miles of the coast. Allowing for a decrease in wind speed as these elevations are several miles from the coast my question is this: Would you see somewhat higher winds at these spots similar to what you would see in a highrise on the coast?? Also is the increase more of a product of height above sea level or height above the ground??? just curious...

docjoe

#2 Postby **MGC** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 9:43 pm

I'd say no. Why, because you are on the surface where the winds are subject to the frictional effects of land. Wind speed rapidly decreases the futher inland you are away from the water. Where in Santa Rosa county are there 200 foot elevations, near the Alabama border?....MGC

#3 Postby **docjoe** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 9:50 pm

MGC wrote:I'd say no. Why, because you are on the surface where the winds are subject to the frictional effects of land. Wind speed rapidly decreases the futher inland you are away from the water. Where in Santa Rosa county are there 200 foot elevations, near the Alabama border?....MGC

Although I dont have a topo map I believe there are actually elevations in Santa Rosa County to around 280 feet. I believe the area around Whiting Field and parts of east Milton are around 150-175 feet in elevation. I may be off on that but I believe this is fairly close

docjoe

#4 Postby **dhweather** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 10:00 pm

Escamba (FL), Santa Rosa, and Escambia (AL) took it on the chin
from Ivan. I believe they get the worst of what Ivan had to offer from wind. We've been over several times since Ivan, and the damage is
still unbelieveable.

#5 Postby **docjoe** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 11:27 pm

dhweather wrote:Escamba (FL), Santa Rosa, and Escambia (AL) took it on the chin
from Ivan. I believe they get the worst of what Ivan had to offer from wind. We've been over several times since Ivan, and the damage is
still unbelieveable.

I have to agree. My house did ok but I lost 25-30 trees. About half of the homes in my neighborhood lost their roof. To my untrained eye the wind damage here between Milton and Pace is just as bad as inland Baldwin County where the eye went in. Forgive my ignorance in terminology here but was the windfield "spreading out" as Ivan made landfall??

docjoe

#6 Postby **dhweather** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 8:30 am

Generally, the windfield does spread out and weaken as the hurricane moves inland.

Ivan had a strong core that did a great deal of damage to Escambia FL and AL, as well as Santa Rosa FL.

Website · #7 Postby **Brent** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 9:02 am

I would say no... now, if you were on an island(say one of the Leeward Islands) and were at a high elevation you could get winds a full category higher(example: Storm is a 115 kt Cat 4, you could have winds approaching Cat 5 or 140 kt). This is different though because Islands don't have much land. The winds would defintely die down quite a bit, however, as far as your immediate area goes(not the coastline), you could have the strongest winds of anyone.

Derek Ortt · #8 Postby **Derek Ortt** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 9:09 am

you would see stronger winds than you would at sea level.

Lets take Georges at Saba. It was a cat 3 with 100KT winds at 10m. Saba, in the mountains, saw a wind gust to 175 m.p.h.

As for Ivan, it had definately started to spread out big time as it approached the coast. It just needed to spend a few more hours over the water ebfore landfall, as it started to weaken about as fast, if not faster than, Lili did

altitude and wind speed

altitude and wind speed

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