hawkeye_wx
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Everything posted by hawkeye_wx
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The pressure is up to 940 mb this morning, and the wind is down some. Lee is no longer a cat 5. The NHC mentioned mentioned some possible sw shear.
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The final recon dropsonde says ~925 mb.
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Extreme drought has expanded across east-central Iowa. A couple spots of exceptional drought have popped in se MN and sw WI.
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928 mb per dropsonde.... darn low, but borderline cat 5 pressure. Typically, 920 mb is where you get into cat 5 territory.
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With a flight wind at 145 kts, it doesn't make sense the SFMR is 157 kts.
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Sorry, but Rita, at 897 mb in the Gulf of Mexico, had the best appearance of any hurricane I've ever seen. It was perfect. The temp inside the eye was 31º, I think, and the dew point was 0º. I still have satellite photos and the vortex message saved on an old hard drive. At ~931 mb, Lee is not even close.
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The SFMR wind was even 139 kts (159 mph) in the sw quad.
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There is still plenty of room for the satellite appearance to improve. Once the pressure gets down into the low 900s, the eye will become perfectly circular and the CDO will become uniformly thick with a distinct outer edge. Lee is nowhere near that, yet. Hurricane Jova, yesterday, had a very crisp, circular, core appearance.
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Recon planes are almost always scheduled to arrive at the center of tropical cyclones within four time ranges.... 2330z-0000z, 0530z-0600z, 1130z-1200z, and 1730z-1800z. So, the new recon plane should be in the center of Lee in about one hour from now (2345z).
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It's hot today, but there's a huge difference between 95 with a dew of 80 (last heat wave) and 95 with a dew of 58. A couple hours ago I was outside for a good ten minutes in the hot sun and I didn't even begin to sweat.
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It feels like this is never going to end. This summer will get a big fat F grade from me (edit: maybe a D because there has been plenty of pleasant weather). We haven't had a month since April in which we received more than 50% of avg precip. If this latest Euro forecast pans out, we will have gone a month will <0.10" of rain.
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My August rain total is 2.04". My met summer rain total is 6.21".
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A good part of eastern Iowa has been upgraded to extreme drought. After decent recovery in early August, my lawn is now baked and crunchy.
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They've only been in the air for a few hours and they are very close to home, so I would think they'll stay in the storm for several more passes.
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Brand new dropsonde says 944 mb with 29 kt wind, so 941-942 mb. I mentioned a little while ago that some dry air got wrapped into the outer core. One thing that did was eliminate the competition from outer core bands, so all the energy is going into the inner eyewall.
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Radar shows a slug of dry air has been pulled into the east side of the core. That part of the core has dried out somewhat. Any outer core bands have been broken up and the eastern eyewall does not appear as thick or robust as the west side.
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To be honest, the new recon's initial wind measurements are kinda meh for a 946 mb storm... 107 kts flight level (se quad) and 101 kts SFMR (nw quad). In the southeast quad, the SFMR is only 79 kts.
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New center dropsonde says 961 mb. Northeast quad wind is only 92 kts flight level, 80 kts SFMR.
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Latest dropsonde says 962 mb with a 25 kt wind, so 960 mb..... but only 94 kts flight level, 79 kts SFMR in the southeast quad.
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Brand new dropsonde says 965 mb.
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4 mb drop in last 1 hour 24 minutes.
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Recon data doesn't look much better than earlier. Dropsonde will probably say a 1 or 2 mb drop, that's all. No wind in the nw eyewall isn't what I expected.
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We are now getting a nice burst of lightning in the eyewall. It's really looking good.
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I'm surprised they don't have another recon plane in there now. NHC's schedule says there will be a new plane in the storm every three hours, beginning at 2030z this afternoon.
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The pressure dropped 1 mb since the last recon pass (50 minutes). The visible loop shows new towers beginning to pinwheel around the eye, so it should be entering another strengthening phase. It's just a question of how fast it can solidify the eyewall and drop the pressure.
