Gonzalos eye crossed Bermuda between 8 and 10 PM (our time), providing meteorologists at the BWS - Bermuda Weather Service an opportunity to launch a weather balloon in the eye of the storm. The results of that balloon (thanks @anthonywx on twitter) provide an epic window into a hurricane courtesy of a skew-T diagram. If youve never seen a Skew-T diagram before, read this tutorial first so you can get the basics of it: theweatherprediction/thermo/skewt/ The hurricanes atmosphere was incredibly juicy. The measured precipitable water (PWAT) came in at 2.89. Around here, the highest PWAT we see is in the 2.25 range...and even that is pretty rare. Any PWAT above two inches is usually tropical levels of moisture; approaching three inches is insane! Beyond juicy, the amount of warmth in the atmosphere is crazy. The hurricanes low pressure center was pumping above zero temperatures up to around 25,000 feet in the atmosphere. In a perfect environment, air rushes to the center of the storm, lifts up in the eye because pressure is lower, and then evacuates out of the top of the storm (thats how you get the fanning effect of cirrus clouds that spread out from the storm in a classic hurricane). When everything is working right, temperatures in the eye can run several degrees warmer than in the surrounding eyewall. Kudos to the BWS for pulling this off during the eye -- thankfully the eye was large enough and the storm moving slow enough for meteorologists in Bermuda to be able to pull this off. This will provide some insight into the anatomy of a hurricane and how temperature and moisture is transported within these storms.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:00:01 +0000
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