HurricaneJosh Posted December 16, 2012 Author Share Posted December 16, 2012 Inching closer. Those towns on the N shore of the island have to be getting raked right now. NAN hasn't updated in a while, but I'm sure winds are higher than 17 kt now: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 16, 2012 Author Share Posted December 16, 2012 NAN winds up to 25 kt. I think the circulation core is getting close, judging by the IR. Winds should rapidly increase from here. Pressure 983 mb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 NAN winds picking up, finally: 40 kt gusting to 58. Pressure 978 mb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 The radar is highly attenuated, but it looks like the eyewall is scraping the coast. NAN should be getting totally raked-- but, weirdly, winds there have slackened a bit (30G43). Pressure 975 mb: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Latest visible seems to suggest the eye is passing just N of NAN, which just might escape the worst. Winds up to 45 kt gusting to 74. Pressure 972 mb. P.S. The different images are not lining up with the map features. One of them is wrong: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 NAN is now 50 kt gusting to 86. Pressure 970 mb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 NAN just had a gust to 90 kt! Pressure 968 mb. (Sustained wind is down a little-- to 45 kt-- suggesting the winds are rather gusty.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Looks like that center is just scraping ashore... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Latest wind report out of NAN is 09045G76KT and the pressure is steady at 968 mb, suggesting 1) the center is passing just to the N and 2) NAN is perhaps just outside the inner core. This would seem to be supported by the IR and visible imagery, although it's hard to tell, as the resolution is fairly low. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 So... Pressure/wind data and IR imagery suggest the cyclone's center just missed NAN to the N. The peak gust was 90 kt, which seems low, given the station's apparent proximity to the core. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Yep, the cyclone's core just missed NAN. Winds are 50 kt gusting to 81 out of the NE, and the pressure is recovering-- up to 970 mb. However, the offshore islands and perhaps the N coast of the main island got a bull's-eye hit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Spectacular MW shot showing the cyclone's core scraping the coastline of Fiji's main island. Note the intensity estimate has increased to a whopping 125 kt. It's interesting, given that the IR presentation has actually degraded a bit in the past few hours. Given this and the IR imagery, it looks like the inner core did pass over NAN-- in which case, I don't understand why the obs weren't a little heartier. In the last hour, they've had 60 kt (10-min), their highest sustained wind yet-- so that's at least a hurricane by our 1-min standard. The peak gust (earlier) was 90 kt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Latest JTWC package shows that the center passed over the W portion of Fiji's main island, with the left (stronger) eyewall passing right over Nadi International Airport (NAN). The cyclone's current estimated intensity is 115 kt-- however, the text discussion indicates it got as high as 125 kt between this package and the previous one-- that is, when the center was coming ashore. The JTWC's 06Z position (17.9S 177.3E) suggests the center passed within ~5 mi of NAN. Given this, I remain mega-puzzled Re: the NAN data: Lowest pressure: 968 mb Max sustained (10-min) wind: 60 kt Max gust: 90 kt I don't get it. I'm not naive enough to have expected NAN to measure 100-kt winds-- but I would think they'd at least have sampled some 80-kt winds. Did the highest winds slip between hourly obs? Or was the offshore flow hitting friction? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Still scraping the W end of the island. The capital city, Suva-- on the SE corner of the island-- probably got off pretty easy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Final image today: a MW shot showing the eye over some offshore islands. Pretty cool. Residents on those islands reported calm conditions for about a half hour: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Lizard Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 A 90 knot gust will do serious damage almost anyplace, even if they didn't quite get the full brunt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 A 90 knot gust will do serious damage almost anyplace, even if they didn't quite get the full brunt. For sure. But I expect more in the eyewall of a Cat 4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 I eMailed with a wind/RMW expert, Jonathan Vigh (PhD), and he said that the terrain might have had something to do with it. Apparently NAN is downwind from a 400-m hill. Most certainly, the N coast and offshore islands got really raked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil882 Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Final image today: a MW shot showing the eye over some offshore islands. Pretty cool. Residents on those islands reported calm conditions for about a half hour: For sure. But I expect more in the eyewall of a Cat 4. That microwave presentation of Evan leaves a little bit to be desired. I'm certainly not sold on the 115 knot intensity, as it appears that there might have been a developing double wind maxima (note the dry moat wrapping 50% around the core in the microwave shot you posted). Satellite intensity estimates have a difficult time when ERC are in progress, and thats what appears to have been the case as Evan made landfall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 That microwave presentation of Evan leaves a little bit to be desired. I'm certainly not sold on the 115 knot intensity, as it appears that there might have been a developing double wind maxima (note the dry moat wrapping 50% around the core in the microwave shot you posted). Satellite intensity estimates have a difficult time when ERC are in progress, and thats what appears to have been the case as Evan made landfall. Interesting-- and agreed. We saw this with that typhoon in Okinawa earlier this year-- that crazy one with 3 or 4 concentric eyewalls. The satellite estimates were Cat 4 and yet, if I remember correctly, the highest measured winds from the core were like 40 or 50 kt. lolz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Re: the winds in NAN... Here's a super-zoomed-in look at that 0528Z MW shot, which was taken as the eyewall was passing close to NAN, and close to the time of their max wind (60 kt from the NNE at 0600Z). This is actually inspired by a similar diagram I saw on a confidential mail list-- I can't share stuff from the mail list, but I thought the diagram was helpful, so I made a similar one. The meteorologist who made the diagram suggested that NAN was on the outer edge of the eyewall, and that stronger winds would have been a little W of there. He and others have also pointed out that the convective signature was much stronger on the cyclone's right (W) side-- and so the highest winds were probably there, even though the left side is usually the stronger side in the S Hemisphere: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 18, 2012 Author Share Posted December 18, 2012 So... Cyclone Evan's wicked rampage across the SPAC islands is over. It's now heading poleward and slowly unraveling over cooler waters and shear. (It'll be extratropical, 25-kt junk if and when the remnants reach NZ in a few days.) Historically, this will go down as an important cyclone for this region-- perhaps the worst in modern times for Nadi's warning zone. The weird track, which entailed a wide loop, was like a game of Connect the Dots-- with the "dots" being Samoa, Wallis and Futuna, and Fiji-- all of which were directly and heavily impacted. I couldn't find a nice graphic showing the complete track up to now, but this gives you a rough idea of the cyclone's history up until the Fiji strike yesterday: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 18, 2012 Author Share Posted December 18, 2012 Meantime... The Oz season is starting slowly. There's some hint of something lame forming way at the fishy W end of Australia's warning area-- but nothing of real interest. The Euro looks clean ten days out. No Tracy redux on the horizon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 18, 2012 Author Share Posted December 18, 2012 Evan is unraveling as it heads S. Here's a nice overview of the complete track up to now. NZ is way at the S end of the map. The cyclone won't make it down there: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 18, 2012 Author Share Posted December 18, 2012 I pretty-much talked to myself during Cyclone Evan's entire lifecycle. I guess this region (SPAC area E of Oz) just isn't too interesting to anyone. But I at least expected a couple of the faithful tropical nerynerdz to join in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslkahuna Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 I pretty-much talked to myself during Cyclone Evan's entire lifecycle. I guess this region (SPAC area E of Oz) just isn't too interesting to anyone. But I at least expected a couple of the faithful tropical nerynerdz to join in. I was following it, but it's been a bad week for me pain wise due to rapidly changing weather and arthritis. Also, I personally am not sure it was a Cat 3 let alone a 4 just didn't have the look. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewxmann Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 I was AFK for the second half of Evan's lifecycle, so I appreciate your posts Josh, thank you. It's good to be able to look back on what happened while I was gone. Really interesting storm (and quite the island hopper). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 18, 2012 Author Share Posted December 18, 2012 I was following it, but it's been a bad week for me pain wise due to rapidly changing weather and arthritis. Also, I personally am not sure it was a Cat 3 let alone a 4 just didn't have the look. Steve Steve! There you are. Sorry to hear you've been in pain-- I hope it goes away as the wx stabilizes. Nice to see you posting in this here thread. Are you saying you doubt it was a Cat 4? If so, I wonder as well. The NAN wind data aside, the station's lowest pressure was 968 mb, and I don't think it was more than ~15 mi from the center of the eye. I guess it's possible that the gradient was 2 mb/mi, so that the center had a pressure in the high 930s, but I dunno... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 18, 2012 Author Share Posted December 18, 2012 I was AFK for the second half of Evan's lifecycle, so I appreciate your posts Josh, thank you. It's good to be able to look back on what happened while I was gone. Really interesting storm (and quite the island hopper). Aw, thanks, Jim. I'm actually glad to know someone was even reading them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted December 19, 2012 Author Share Posted December 19, 2012 Evan is now a convectionless, ghostly swirl, but some are suggesting there could be some extratropical impact in NZ. Whatevz. Meanwhile, the Euro is showing a low impacting the Kimberley region of Western Australia in the 8-10-day range. Let's see how that feature evolves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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