A new world record wind gust: 253 mph in Australia's Tropical Cyclone Olivia
The 6,288-foot peak of New Hampshire's Mount Washington is a forbidding landscape of wind-swept barren rock, home to some of planet Earth's fiercest winds. As a 5-year old boy, I remember being blown over by a terrific gust of wind on the summit, and rolling out of control towards a dangerous drop-off before a fortuitously-placed rock saved me. Perusing the Guinness Book of World Records as a kid, three iconic world weather records always held a particular mystique and fascination for me: the incredible 136°F (57.8°C) at El Azizia, Libya in 1922, the -128.5°F (-89.2°C) at the "Pole of Cold" in Vostok, Antarctica in 1983, and the amazing 231 mph wind gust (103.3 m/s) recorded in 1934 on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire. Well, the legendary winds of Mount Washington have to take second place now, next to the tropical waters of northwest Australia. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced that the new world wind speed record at the surface is a 253 mph (113.2 m/s) wind gust measured on Barrow Island, Australia. The gust occurred on April 10, 1996, during passage of the eyewall of Category 4 Tropical Cyclone Olivia.
Figure 1. Instruments coated with rime ice on the summit of Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Image credit: Mike Theiss.
Tropical Cyclone Olivia
Tropical Cyclone Olivia was a Category 4 storm on the U.S. Saffir-Simpson scale, and generated sustained winds of 145 mph (1-minute average) as it crossed over Barrow Island off the northwest coast of Australia on April 10, 1996. Olivia had a central pressure of 927 mb and an eye 45 miles in diameter at the time, and generated waves 21 meters (69 feet) high offshore. According to Black et al. (1999), the eyewall likely had a tornado-scale mesovortex embedded in it that caused the extreme wind gust of 253 mph. The gust was measured at the standard measuring height of 10 meters above ground, on ground at an elevation of 64 meters (210 feet). A similar mesovortex was encountered by a Hurricane Hunter aircraft in Hurricane Hugo of 1989, and a mesovortex was also believed to be responsible for the 239 mph wind gust measured at 1400 meters by a dropsonde in Hurricane Isabel in 2003. For reference, 200 mph is the threshold for the strongest category of tornado, the EF-5, and any gusts of this strength are capable of causing catastrophic damage.
Figure 2. Visible satellite image of Tropical Cyclone Olivia a few hours before it crossed Barrow Island, Australia, setting a new world-record wind gust of 253 mph. Image credit: Japan Meteorological Agency.
Figure 3. Wind trace taken at Barrow Island, Australia during Tropical Cyclone Olivia. Image credit: Buchan, S.J., P.G. Black, and R.L. Cohen, 1999, "The Impact of Tropical Cyclone Olivia on Australia's Northwest Shelf", paper presented at the 1999 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, 3-6 May, 1999.
Why did it take so long for the new record to be announced?
The instrument used to take the world record wind gust was funded by a private company, Chevron, and Chevron's data was not made available to forecasters at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) during the storm. After the storm, the tropical cyclone experts at BOM were made aware of the data, but it was viewed as suspect, since the gusts were so extreme and the data was taken with equipment of unknown accuracy. Hence, the observations were not included in the post-storm report. Steve Buchan from RPS MetOcean believed in the accuracy of the observations, and coauthored a paper on the record gust, presented at the 1999 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston (Buchan et al., 1999). The data lay dormant until 2009, when Joe Courtney of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology was made aware of it. Courtney wrote up a report, coauthored with Steve Buchan, and presented this to the WMO extremes committee for ratification. The report has not been made public yet, and is awaiting approval by Chevron. The verified data will be released next month at a World Meteorological Organization meeting in Turkey, when the new world wind record will become official.
New Hampshire residents are not happy
Residents of New Hampshire are understandably not too happy about losing their cherished claim to fame. The current home page of the Mount Washington Observatory reads, "For once, the big news on Mount Washington isn't our extreme weather. Sadly, it's about how our extreme weather--our world record wind speed, to be exact--was outdone by that of a warm, tropical island".
Comparison with other wind records
Top wind in an Atlantic hurricane: 239 mph (107 m/s) at an altitude of 1400 meters, measured by dropsonde in Hurricane Isabel (2003).
Top surface wind in an Atlantic hurricane: 211 mph (94.4 m/s), Hurricane Gustav, Paso Real de San Diego meteorological station in the western Cuban province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba, on the afternoon of August 30, 2008.
Top wind in a tornado: 302 mph (135 m/s), measured via Doppler radar at an altitude of 100 meters (330 feet), in the Bridge Creek, Oklahoma tornado of May 3, 1999.
Top surface wind not associated with a tropical cyclone or tornado: 231 mph (103.3 m/s), April 12, 1934 on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
Top wind in a typhoon: 191 mph (85.4 m/s) on Taiwanese Island of Lanya, Super Typhoon Ryan, Sep 22, 1995; also on island of Miyakojima, Super Typhoon Cora, Sep 5, 1966.
Top surface wind not measured on a mountain or in a tropical cyclone: 207 mph (92.5 m/s) measured in Greenland at Thule Air Force Base on March 6, 1972.
Top wind measured in a U.S. hurricane: 186 mph (83.1 m/s) measured at Blue Hill Observatory, Massachusetts, during the 1938 New England Hurricane.
References
Buchan, S.J., P.G. Black, and R.L. Cohen, 1999, "The Impact of Tropical Cyclone Olivia on Australia's Northwest Shelf", paper presented at the 1999 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, 3-6 May, 1999.
Black, P.G., Buchan, S.J., and R.L. Cohen, 1999, "The Tropical Cyclone Eyewall Mesovortex: A Physical Mechanism Explaining Extreme Peak Gust Occurrence in TC Olivia, 4 April 1996 on Barrow Island, Australia", paper presented at the 1999 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, 3-6 May, 1999.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 — Blog Index
but oh my Aries..we've worked so hard on you already..
A picture I took of it.. (here's the series)
Skyepony, you have some great photos!
Actually we have a couple GOES ones up there already waiting for the current ones to finish dying and at least one more, that I know of off the top of my head, going up in the next year (I think).
hey Hydrus, you have a winter storm watch now, right?
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MORRISTOWN TN
259 PM EST WED JAN 27 2010
...SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATION EXPECTED FRIDAY THROUGH
SATURDAY...
.A COLD FRONT WILL MOVE ACROSS THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION ON
THURSDAY...BRINGING COLD AIR TO THE AREA. MEANWHILE A LOW PRESSURE
SYSTEM WILL TAKE SHAPE OVER TEXAS ON THURSDAY...THEN TRACK EAST
ALONG THE GULF COAST. LIGHT PRECIPITATION WILL BEGIN TO OVERSPREAD
THE AREA FRIDAY AFTERNOON...THEN INCREASE IN INTENSITY THROUGH
FRIDAY EVENING. MUCH OF THE PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO FALL AS
SNOW THROUGH THE ENTIRE EVENT...WITH SIGNIFICANT ACCUMULATIONS
EXPECTED IN SOME AREAS. THERE REMAINS MUCH UNCERTAINTY REGARDING
THE EXACT TIMING AND THE EXACT LOCATION OF THE TRANSITION ZONE
BETWEEN RAIN AND SNOW. A CHANGE OF ONLY A FEW DEGREES CAN MEAN A
SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE IN SNOW AMOUNTS.
TNZ012>017-035-037>039-042-044-046-VAZ001-002-005-006-008-281000-
/O.NEW.KMRX.WS.A.0001.100129T1800Z-100130T2100Z/
SCOTT TN-CAMPBELL-CLAIBORNE-HANCOCK-HAWKINS-SULLIVAN-MORGAN-UNION-
GRAINGER-HAMBLEN-NORTHWEST GREENE-WASHINGTON TN-NORTHWEST CARTER-
LEE-WISE-SCOTT-RUSSELL-WASHINGTON-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...ONEIDA...LA FOLLETTE...TAZEWELL...
SNEEDVILLE...ROGERSVILLE...KINGSPORT...WARTBURG...MAYNARDVILLE...
RUTLEDGE...MORRISTOWN...GREENEVILLE...JOHNSON CITY...
ELIZABETHTON...JONESVILLE...WISE...NORTON...GATE CITY...LEBANON...
ABINGDON
259 PM EST WED JAN 27 2010
...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH
SATURDAY AFTERNOON...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MORRISTOWN HAS ISSUED A WINTER
STORM WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH
SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
* TIMING: LIGHT SNOW IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN FALLING ON FRIDAY...AND
INCREASE IN INTENSITY THROUGH FRIDAY EVENING. SNOW IS EXPECTED TO
BEGIN TO DECREASE THROUGH SATURDAY.
* ACCUMULATIONS: SNOWFALL AMOUNTS OF 4 TO 8 INCHES ARE EXPECTED
ACROSS THE NORTHERN CUMBERLAND PLATEAU...NORTHEAST TENNESSEE
INCLUDING THE TRI-CITIES AREA...AND SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA.
* IMPACTS: ROAD CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED TO BE VERY HAZARDOUS FROM
FRIDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A WINTER STORM WATCH MEANS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT
SNOW...SLEET...AND/OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS. FUTURE DRIVING
CONDITIONS MAY BECOME HAZARDOUS...SO CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE
LATEST FORECASTS.
&&
the neverending search for JFV,
GOES 14 was launched on 6-27-09; I know you're right but I can't find the notice for the 2010-2011 launches
I just did...my dad was a cop for a number of years and remembers one epic fail where his gun read a parked car at 87mph LOL
No, it's not a search...I fear I've found him...got to stop thinking about how much a post looks like this person or that person...ignorance is bliss, right?
I agree,some things are better left unknown.
Unfortunately human nature takes over and there you are, staring down the muzzle of (forgive the phrase) an inconvenient truth...you have mail, btw (sharing the wealth)
I was wrong about that a little...I thought GOES-R was sooner, but the first one is scheduled for 2015. Is already funded and in the works, I think.
GOES-P is planned to go up March 1.
GOES-O was launched last June.
Yeah I kinda can't wait till they pull GOES-14 out of storage up there. But it would be one less. A good bit of them are past life expactancy & there's not many in the works. Already I think we will be hindered this season compared to the past. Not like'n to see windsat floundering at all at this point.. it's in it's 10th year of it's 5 year life expactancy
Not snow. Rime ice (fog ...or drizzle... frozen on surfaces)
Mystery solved, to some degree...yeah, the GOES birds are replaced regularly (okay, as regularly as they need to be)
You bet, Skyepony!
That's what GOES-O is...renamed upon orbit to numerical...
yeah, it says that it is rime ice under the image
Oh it happens and it sticks to everything, making thin coats of ice.
FREEZING FOG
Used to describe the phenomena when fog is present and the air temperature is below 0°C. It is reported as "FZFG" in an observation and on the METAR.
It can form below freezing. Just depends on the dew point and relative humidity in the air at the time.
Yes I know..that's why I called it GOES-14..I think you could find a picture of it launching in my pictures.. I wanna say it went up on a Delta heavy..
Japan & other countries have been putting resources toward climate monitoring satellites. There's already talk of using some of their data. Think it will be open to the web for us to see?
This is how rime ice occurs, but the fog can be, and usually is, below freezing, yet still liquid (which we call super-cooled). Then once it touches a surface, freezes immediately.
But you can have fog that is frozen in air as well. It doesn't attach itself to surfaces nearly as well.
Icing on wings of aircraft is usually rime-type. Baaaaad for flying.
Absolutely beautiful when this happens. Have seen it so think you can't see through a chain link fence. Then run your fingers across the fence after the sun comes out and it's a shower sparkling of ice crystals. Plus it starts drifting in the air. Sooo uh, 60's/70's reminiscent. :)
Tough question...if it is from the EU, I'd initially go with the policies of METEOSAT as a guess-answer to that.
I think the Japanese are more likely to share.
All of the above depends on whether or not there was any NOAA funding provided as a "joint venture". If so, better access is likely.
LOL I have seen plenty of it here :P
NASA Marks the Joint Typhoon Warning Center's 50th Anniversary
This year, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) turns 50 years old, and NASA is proud to be one of their partners in tropical cyclone forecasting and research.
JTWC is a joint U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force office that includes Navy, Air Force and civilian meteorologists and satellite analysts. The center, located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, provides forecasts, advisories and warnings on tropical cyclones (the generic name for a typhoon, cyclone, hurricane, tropical storm or tropical depression).
NASA does not forecast tropical cyclones, but provides satellite data to the JTWC to enable meteorologists there to create forecasts for tropical cyclones in the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean and southern hemisphere. In turn, NASA posts JTWC's forecasts for cyclones that occur in these regions on the NASA Hurricane and Tropical Cyclone page.
JTWC provides tropical cyclone reconnaissance and forecasting to support the safety of military and other government assets in the U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Central Command areas of responsibility. JTWC forecasters there use NASA, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), and foreign satellite sensors, in addition to shore, buoy, ship, and aircraft observations and surface radar imagery. They also utilize the forecasts produced by computer models operated by the United States, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts in the production of tropical cyclone forecasts.
Bill Patzert, climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. said, "For the JTWC, hurricane, cyclone and typhoon forecasting is a year-round job. When the seasons switch hemispheres, the JTWC follows. They are a 24/7, all year center. For the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans (in both hemispheres), the Center is the go-to cyclone forecasting group. For the past 50 years, they have not only insured the safety of America's fighting forces, but also served the many nations of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. Also, for all scientists, the JTWC archive is an invaluable scientific resource."
Up until it’s recent failure, the center routinely used NASA QuikSCAT scatterometer-derived ocean surface wind vectors (speed and direction) data to monitor storm genesis (determine when systems reach tropical depression status), storm location, and the radius of gale force winds.
Other NASA satellite data used by JTWC include the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission’s (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) and its precipitation radar, Aqua’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E), the CloudSat cloud radar, and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard both NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.
NOAA, Japan Establish Navigation Satellite Ground Station in Guam
August 27, 2009
Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled a new ground station in Guam that will track spacecraft from JAXA’s upcoming Quasi-Zenith Satellite System.
The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, designed to work seamlessly with the U.S. Global Positioning System, is a JAXA effort to improve navigation satellite coverage over Japan and surrounding areas. The first QZSS satellite is expected to launch in 2010.
It may look soft, but I promise all of the ice in the pic above is rock hard.
Click on the "Mike Theiss" after the image credit, there are more pics. Including one showing someone chipping away at it with a crowbar.
I don't like how ex-leaders of the NASA contractor companies are on boards to help map NASA's future. So much technology/biology/climatology/chemistry & really about anything comes from there. It could be like taxpayers fund company's research departments & then buy the products..
But what if NASA paid a private company to develop something that the private company and NASA then used to further develop their own products or services, BUT had to completely and openly share the developed technology with the general public and/or competition?
What you describe goes on all the time. And the resulting data product, methodology, etc. is available for any and all use by everyone.
Boeing,Chrysler, Rockwell,Lockheed-Martin..all have a stake in these past and in their present forms.
To not Fund ARES or Constellation will Leave the US without a Manned Spacecraft after the Final Shuttle flies.
And that would be a sad day indeed.
I'll admit that I was curious myself as to just how much did come from a major forest fire.
Effects of forest fire on carbon emissions, climate impacts often overestimated
CORVALLIS, Ore. %u2013 A recent study at Oregon State University indicates that some past approaches to calculating the impacts of forest fires have grossly overestimated the number of live trees that burn up and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result.
The research was done on the Metolius River Watershed in the central Oregon Cascade Range, where about one-third %u2013 or 100,000 acres %u2013 of the area burned in four large fires in 2002-03. Although some previous studies assumed that 30 percent of the mass of living trees was consumed during forest fires, this study found that only 1-3 percent was consumed.
Some estimates done around that time suggested that the B&B Complex fire in 2003, just one of the four Metolius fires, released 600 percent more carbon emissions than all other energy and fossil fuel use that year in the state of Oregon %u2013 but this study concluded that the four fires combined produced only about 2.5 percent of annual statewide carbon emissions.
Even in 2002, the most extreme fire year in recent history, the researchers estimate that all fires across Oregon emitted only about 22 percent of industrial and fossil fuel emissions in the state %u2013 and that number is much lower for most years, about 3 percent on average for the 10 years from 1992 to 2001.
more: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-01/osu-eof012710.php
Copyright © The Weather Underground, Inc.
If we're talking about GOES O, that would be 15, yes?
Viewing: 101 - 151
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 — Blog Index