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Hurricane PATRICIA & Major EPAC Landfalls


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Personally I think Haiyan was stronger, at its strongest then Patricia. Also Haiyan was not directly sampled as Patricia was.

Haiyans satellite presentation was the best of modern times, it likely had much lower pressure and had a much larger wind field. it goes with out saying Hiyan had much more ace and imparted far more energy in to the ocean

Which had the strongest winds in its eye wall at the absolute peak of intensity will never be known unfortunately

 

I don't know. PATRICIA's verified winds were 175 knots (at least), and I have a hard time believing HAIYAN's were any higher. IN general WPAC systems have lower pressures and colder cloud tops, but there's little evidence that the peak winds in the WPAC's strongest cyclones are any higher than those in other basins.

 

One note: larger wind fields usually mean lower peak winds, because the gradient is spread over a wider area. So if you're proposing that HAIYAN was stronger (i.e., had higher winds), saying that it had a larger wind field actually hurts your argument.

 

Re: ACE... Yeah, that's something else entirely. We're talking about peak intensity, not overall energy expended. (Personally, I don't even follow ACE-- it's not a meaningful metric to me.)

 

Just to put Patricia in further perspective, here are the 6 nlowest measured sea level pressures worldwide and the number of storms with each.

870 mb-1

876 mb-1

877 mb-2

878 mb-1

879 mb-2

882 mb-1

Steve

 

Cool to see this list-- thanks, Steve.

 

I know the 870 mb in TIP, 879 mb in PATRICIA, and 882 mb in WILMA were all actually measured (or closely extrapolated from actual measurements). Were the others actually measured, and not just derived from satellite estimates?

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For those curious, the pressures match up with the following storms:

 

870 mb: Tip, WPac, 1979.

 

876 mb: June, WPac, 1975

 

877 mb: Ida, WPac ,1958

             Nora, WPac, 1973

 

878 mb: Rita, WPac, 1978

 

879 mb: Vanessa, WPac, 1984

             Patricia, EPac, 2015

 

882 mb: Wilma, NAtl, 2005

 

Also worth mentioning is Super Typhoon Forrest in 1983. Forrest's lowest dropsonde recorded pressure was 883 mb, but a recon pass a little earlier in which a dropsonde was not released recorded a 700 mb height of 2009 m, which extrapolates to a surface pressure of 876 mb.

 

Anyway, in terms of recon sampled storms, these few are the strongest of the strongest.

 

I'm pretty sure the lack of any recon readings from Haiyan will never stop bugging me. The absence makes it downright impossible to quantifiably place Haiyan in the historical record with any type of precision. In my opinion though, I think Haiyan absolutely belongs in the league with the storms above at the very least. Meteorologically, I truly believe that storm was something special.

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Rita and June both occurred when I was in the Philippines. I was working the night that June began to bomb and monitored the recon reports (and actually received and relayed some of them when the crew couldn't contact Guam. I have always wondered a bit about June- the 1975 ATCR states that the lowest pressure was measured at the inside edge of the eyewall-not where one finds the pressure center usually. June's eye was incredibly small-even smaller than what Wilma's got down to. I actually had the chance to talk to the crew that made that drop and they said that it the hardest center they ever fixed because they could not turn in the eye. Finally they made the drop as soon as they entered the eye and it sailed across the 2.5 mile diameter eye to the other side. So June's actual pressure could have been lower. Like Tip June was large. Guam had damaging typhoon wind gusts about 200 mile from the center while at Clark AB we had gust to 30 knots due the gradient between June and high pressure over China.

Steve

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I don't know. PATRICIA's verified winds were 175 knots (at least), and I have a hard time believing HAIYAN's were any higher. IN general WPAC systems have lower pressures and colder cloud tops, but there's little evidence that the peak winds in the WPAC's strongest cyclones are any higher than those in other basins.

One note: larger wind fields usually mean lower peak winds, because the gradient is spread over a wider area. So if you're proposing that HAIYAN was stronger (i.e., had higher winds), saying that it had a larger wind field actually hurts your argument.

Re: ACE... Yeah, that's something else entirely. We're talking about peak intensity, not overall energy expended. (Personally, I don't even follow ACE-- it's not a meaningful metric to me.)

Cool to see this list-- thanks, Steve.

I know the 870 mb in TIP, 879 mb in PATRICIA, and 882 mb in WILMA were all actually measured (or closely extrapolated from actual measurements). Were the others actually measured, and not just derived from satellite estimates?

We agree and disagree. After more thinking I agree Patricia's top winds in the core because it was smaller probably were stronger for a time. I would be curious to learn about the sea state witnessed during the pass. Apparently Camille had a sea state never seen prior. With the whole ocean white

Again we will never know the true top winds in each

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  • 1 month later...
Hot off the press! The National Hurricane Center has released their *official* report on Hurricane PATRICIA—the fiercest cyclone in history, and my most extreme chase. Their deep postanalysis has revealed two important things about the storm:

 

/1 – PEAK INTENSITY. The hurricane was even stronger than we realized at the time! At its peak, PATRICIA’s 1-minute sustained winds reached an *incredible* 185 knots (~215 mph, 95 m/s, 345 km/hr). This cements PATRICIA’s position as the strongest tropical cyclone ever observed anywhere on earth—stronger even than Super Typhoons HAIYAN (2013) and TIP (1979). What’s especially impressive is that PATRICIA’s peak-wind value was derived directly from reconnaissance measurements—not satellite-based guesswork. (Note: I discount the outlandish wind values for Typhoon NANCY (1961), since estimates from that era are notoriously inflated.) The lowest pressure of 872 mb is the second-lowest ever—just above TIP's 870 mb.

 

/2 – LANDFALL INTENSITY. The hurricane weakened as it approached the coast, making landfall in Mexico with winds of 130 knots (~150 mph, 65 m/s, 240 km/hr). That’s a very strong Cat 4 on the USA scale—a little lower than the Cat 5 assigned at the time. (In other regions: That’s still Cat 5 on the Australian cyclone scale and a “super typhoon” in the WPAC.) Despite the weakening, PATRICIA is the strongest hurricane landfall ever recorded in the Pacific—beating out the Great Mexico Hurricane that devastated the port city of Manzanillo in 1959.

 


 

It’s thorough and full of cool details. My data and observations played a key role in the NHC’s postanalysis, and I’m proud to have contributed to our understanding of this incredible cyclone.

post-19-0-11895300-1454599841_thumb.png

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The old WPac wind/pressure relationship is the Atkinson & Holliday relationship, and this was not used for Patricia. Instead, the KZC pressure/wind relationship was used, which is much more flexible and likely much more accurate since it takes into account more than one variable.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0493%281977%29105%3C0421%3ATCMSLP%3E2.0.CO%3B2

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/WAF965.1

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/resources/docs/Courtney&Knaff_2009.pdf

(I hope these links work since I'm without my computer and on a mobile device right now).

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Congratulations Josh for your intercept and the data you provided for the Patricia Report.

 

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/EP202015_Patricia.pdf

 

Hey, thanks, Steve! It's cool to add to the science. :)

 

Awesome Job Josh!

I love the section where the NHC notes that since they used the W/P derivation that the pressure could have dropped into the 860's.

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, that was insane. I was really surprised by the report-- how much higher the peak winds were and how much lower the pressure was (compared with operational). To think it almost beat out TIP...

 

Thanks for the kind words. :)

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In other EPAC news...

 

About a year ago, we completed a deep reanalysis of the Great Mexico Hurricane of 1959.

 

This ferocious hurricane-- which smashed the port city of Manzanillo late one night in October 1959-- had long been considered a Cat-5 landfall. Our reanalysis concluded otherwise-- that it probably made landfall with winds of 120 knots (Cat 4). Our revised track also brought the center much, much closer to the port than the the traditional HURDAT track.

 

This week, the NHC's Best Track Committee approved our work, and it'll now become part of the official database.

 

For more details, as well as our paper: http://icyclone.com/now/2016/feb/03-february-2016.html

 

Andrew Hagen (StormGeo), myself, Erik Sereno Trabaldo, and Jorge Abelardo González (wxmx on this board) researched and wrote the paper, with Andrew and me presenting and defending the paper's findings before the National Hurricane Center’s Best Track Committee.

 

post-19-0-30530100-1454754185_thumb.png

 

post-19-0-43708000-1454754204_thumb.png

 

post-19-0-21516200-1454754222_thumb.png

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Oh, and with the PATRICIA report out and the 1959 reanalysis now approved, here are the revised rankings for strongest EPAC landfalls. This list includes all majors since 1949. Pink = Cat 5red = Cat 4orange = Cat 3.
 

2015 PATRICIA (23 Oct) - Jalisco - Cat 4 (130 kt)
 
1976 MADELINE (08 Oct) - Guerrero - Cat 4 (125 kt)
 
2002 KENNA (25 Oct) - Nayarit - Cat 4 (120 kt)
1959 GREAT MEXICO HURRICANE (27 Oct) - Colima - Cat 4 (120 kt)
1957 No. 10 (22 Oct) - Sinaloa - Cat 4 (120 kt)
 
2014 ODILE (14 Sep) - Baja California Sur - Cat 3 (110 kt)
2006 LANE (16 Sep) - Sinaloa - Cat 3 (110 kt)
1983 TICO (19 Oct) - Sinaloa - Cat 3 (110 kt)
1967 OLIVIA (14 Oct) - Baja California Sur - Cat 3 (110 kt)
 
1989 KIKO (27 Aug) - Baja California Sur - Cat 3 (100 kt)
1976 LIZA (01 Oct) - Sinaloa - Cat 3 (~100 kt)
1975 OLIVIA (25 Oct) - Sinaloa - Cat 3 (100 kt)

 

A few things to note: 

  • PATRICIA is the strongest known landfall in the basin.
  • All of the Cat 4s (and 75% of the majors) happened in October.
  • With the downgrading of PATRICIA and 1959, there are now no known Cat-5 landfalls in this basin.

Nerd fun! :)

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My guess is the mountainous terrain just inland makes it extremely difficult of a storm to maintain Cat 5 intensity all the way to the coast due to downsloping etc. EPac cyclones that impact Mexico also tend to be smaller as they do not generally have time of undergo ERC's then re-intensify. Small intense cyclones are prone to rapid increases and decreases in intensity. That fact that Patricia maintained 1-min sustained winds of 200+ mph for as long is it did was amazing in of itself.

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My guess is the mountainous terrain just inland makes it extremely difficult of a storm to maintain Cat 5 intensity all the way to the coast due to downsloping etc. EPac cyclones that impact Mexico also tend to be smaller as they do not generally have time of undergo ERC's then re-intensify. Small intense cyclones are prone to rapid increases and decreases in intensity. That fact that Patricia maintained 1-min sustained winds of 200+ mph for as long is it did was amazing in of itself.

 

Yeah, I agree-- I think that if the terrain in that region were flatter, it would have maintained Cat-5 intensity through landfall. Anyhoo, 130 knots is plenty nuclear-- and it sure felt like it. :D

 

Taiwan is a more extreme example. Taiwan makes this part of Mexico look like Florida-- so no matter how gorgeous an approaching cyclone, the core seems to disintegrate and it turns to scrambled eggs as it nears the coast. It seems to happen every time-- although Typhoon DUJUAN still had a decent eye when it passed over me in Su'ao this past fall.

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It happens near other mountainous coastal areas too, like Hispaniola and Luzon. Tropical cyclones and downsloping air from higher terrain don't mix.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yep.

 

Luzon indeed knocks the living crap out of typhoons. In fact, my experience while in the Philippine was that coasting out intensity was rarely above 60kt regardless of landfalling intensity and this was when recon was available in WPAC.

 

Steve

 

Yeah. I've noticed that the satellite presentations of very intense Luzon typhoons-- like MEGI 2010 and NOUL 2015-- seem to rapidly deteriorate as the eye nears the mountainous terrain. This issue plus the lack of towns/infrastructure make Luzon dicey chase turf, at best.

 

P.S. What do you mean by "coasting-out intensity"? Is that the intensity when the cyclone exits the W coast and spills back out over the water?

 

Nice job Josh and I'm glad you were able to provide so much data t the NHC.

 

Hey, thanks, Shaggy! This was a very satisfying chase, to get in the eye of such an intense-- yet tiny-- hurricane. I feel like I was really about to add to the science with this one.

 

How's it going? :)

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Yep.

 

 

Yeah. I've noticed that the satellite presentations of very intense Luzon typhoons-- like MEGI 2010 and NOUL 2015-- seem to rapidly deteriorate as the eye nears the mountainous terrain. This issue plus the lack of towns/infrastructure make Luzon dicey chase turf, at best.

 

P.S. What do you mean by "coasting-out intensity"? Is that the intensity when the cyclone exits the W coast and spills back out over the water?

 

 

Hey, thanks, Shaggy! This was a very satisfying chase, to get in the eye of such an intense-- yet tiny-- hurricane. I feel like I was really about to add to the science with this one. 

 

How's it going? :)

 

Bet it was satisfying to be able to really contribute the scientific data to the most intense storm ever. Pretty historic really if you think about it.

 

I'm good....working a lot and enjoying being a new dad. This is me and my new son Ryan when he was just 2 weeks old. He is now going on 6 weeks old and getting bigger by the day. Thats us in post 1109.

 

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/22225-post-a-recent-picture-of-yourself/page-32?

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Bet it was satisfying to be able to really contribute the scientific data to the most intense storm ever. Pretty historic really if you think about it.

 

I'm good....working a lot and enjoying being a new dad. This is me and my new son Ryan when he was just 2 weeks old. He is now going on 6 weeks old and getting bigger by the day. Thats us in post 1109.

 

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/22225-post-a-recent-picture-of-yourself/page-32?

 

Awww, that's a great pic, shaggy! What a nice baby. :) Congrats on that-- that is awesome. :)

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Yep.

 

 

Yeah. I've noticed that the satellite presentations of very intense Luzon typhoons-- like MEGI 2010 and NOUL 2015-- seem to rapidly deteriorate as the eye nears the mountainous terrain. This issue plus the lack of towns/infrastructure make Luzon dicey chase turf, at best.

 

P.S. What do you mean by "coasting-out intensity"? Is that the intensity when the cyclone exits the W coast and spills back out over the water?

 

 

Hey, thanks, Shaggy! This was a very satisfying chase, to get in the eye of such an intense-- yet tiny-- hurricane. I feel like I was really about to add to the science with this one.

 

How's it going? :)

Yes'

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  • 2 weeks later...

Didn't see this thread, nice report. I was a little mad at Josh for helping get Patricia downgraded until I realized he also help get the 1959 Manzinillo Hurricane downgraded also.  Leave it to Josh to get storms that happened before he was even born downgraded :thumbsup:.

 

Ha ha ha! :D

 

Re: PATRICIA... Don't say that! It was not my intention to get it downgraded. The data are what they are. Anyhoo, I think the NHC's verdict on the landfall intensity (130 knots) makes sense-- still wicked strong, and consistent with the violent conditions we saw in the cyclone's tiny direct-hit zone.

 

Re: the 1959 hurricane... I did not approach it with any agenda. But once my research partners and I really looked at it, we could not find one scrap of evidence to justify Cat 5. Nothing. Thus the downgrade. By the way, we submitted our 1959 reanalysis to the NHC a year ago-- way before PATRICIA. While I believe it was a lower priority, they expedited review and approval so we'd have a clear understanding of 1959 in time for the release of the PATRICIA report. This is great, because now we know PATRICIA is officially the strongest EPAC landfall on record-- with no ambiguity.

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  • 4 weeks later...

 

Thats nuts!

 

Yeah, the report came out on 04 February. This thread went into depth about it:

 

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/47268-hurricane-patricia-major-epac-landfalls/?p=3949003

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