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| A dramatic view from inside the eye of Hurricane Melissa near Jamaica. Photo was taken for a hurricane hunter plane. One of those planes dropped an instrument that detected a 252 mph wind gust within the storm. That gust was just verified as the strongest on record detected in a hurricane. |
A weather measuring instrument called a dropsonde was tossed into the hurricane from a NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane shortly before storm made landfall in Jamaica back on October 28.
The dropsonde recorded a wind gust of 252 mph on its way down through the storm.
The 252 mph gust was measured about 820 feet above the ocean.
This beats the old record for highest wind recorded by a dropsonde in a tropical system.
That previous world record for the highest gust was 248 mph from a dropsonde that descended through Typhoon Mega in the western Pacific Ocean back in 2010.
CONFIRMING THE DATA
A dropsonde, is a device NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane personnel drop into the maw of hurricanes. Dropsondes have a small parachute attached and they take somewhere between two and four readings per second before splashing into the ocean. They usually throw a bunch of dropsondes into a hurricane pretty much all at once to get a holistic look under the hood of the storm. ,
While on its way down, dropsondes grab information on air pressure, temperatures, and wind, and relay that back to the hurricane hunter plane.
The hurricane hunters knew right away that the dropsonde recorded that 252 mph gusts. But NOAA and other scientists, as they always do, wanted to double check the data to make sure there wasn't something wrong with the dropsonde.
According to a press release from U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) it took until this week to verify the information because NCAR scientists needed to verify the data to make sure there was no glitch with the dropsonde.
As CBS reported, researchers went through the numbers using quality control software. They also confirmed the 252 mph gust was physically possible, given Hurricane Melissa's strength and structure.
The careful review was necessary because errors can happen with dropsonde data. A dropsonde that fell through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A dropsonde measurement in that storm when it was in the Gulf of Mexico recorded a gust higher than that seen in Melissa.
However, researchers found a lot of problems with that Katrina measurement so it was discarded.
RECORD BIG MELISSA
At the time the 252 mph gust was measured while Hurricane Melissa was officially a storm with sustained winds of 185 mph. It made landfall in Jamaica at that strength. Damage in Jamaica where winds were strongest looked like they were caused by an EF-4 tornado.
The gusts might indicate that Hurricane Melissa might have been even a little stronger than that 185 mph at landfall.
After each hurricane, meteorologists examine the data from the storms and publish a full, detailed analysis. Those analyses often update the strength of hurricanes that differ from original reports.
Before this 252 mph gusts was verified, Hurricane Melissa was already a record breaker. When Melissa made landfall those 185 mph (as it stands now, anyway) sustained winds ties the record for strongest winds for an Atlantic Ocean hurricane making landfall.
Only two storms the Labor Day Hurricane in Florida back in 1935 and Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas in 2019.
The central air pressure in Hurricane Melissa reached 892 millibars. That's another way of measuring the strength of a hurricane. With that pressure, Melissa tied the record for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane since that 1935 hurricane in Florida.
As the Washington Post tells us, Hurricane Melissa also set an informal record for the most eyewall lightning observed by satellites. Before landfall, the satellites detected 700 flashes per minute, or 11 per second.
Most hurricanes don't generate much lightning. When there is lightning in a hurricane, it's a sign of an extremely intense hurricane, or one that is strengthening.
SCARY STORM, SCARY TREND
Josh Morgerman, very likely the most prolific and expert hurricane chaser in the world, has been in the middle of 84 hurricanes and typhoons so far. He was in Jamaica for Melissa.
He wrote: "Melissa's winds were absolutely ferocious - the most intense I've witnessed in 84 hurricanes. And the resultant damage was spectacular. This was a truly rare specimen."
Morgerman continued in his technical report on the hurricane, where he monitored the storm in a struck hotel building:
"At the height of the storm, the whiteout was 100% and the screaming sound was so hard that others in the hotel kitchen were putting their hands over their ears. This aside the explosive gustiness of the winds blasted the building, caused one's ear drums to pull painfully, so that the author was often holding or rubbing his own ears"
Morgerman said many trees that were somehow left standing were completely defoliated. In some cases the bark was ripped off. Wood frame homes were completely flattened, concrete buildings partly collapsed and paint was blasted off some buildings and cars.
Gawd, that had to be absolutely terrifying.
Just a reminder, though the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean doesn't seem to be increasing, the number of super powerful ones are increasing. And those top end storms seem to be getting stronger than ever.
There's even talk of creating a Category 6 for hurricanes. Right now, the strength chart for hurricanes go from Category 1 to 5.
Climate change might well be making horrible experiences like what Jamaica went through ever more likely. And inevitably, some of these will crash into the United States.
The records being set by Hurricane Melissa are for sure a cautionary tale.
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