By Paul Homewood
Hurricane Ophelia is on its way!
According to the National Hurricane Center, Ophelia has just been upgraded to a Cat 3, with wind speeds of 115 mph.
But, not for the first time, we find that these claims are based on satellite data which are not supported by other sources.
NOAA maintain a database of all of the data concerning tropical cyclones. According to them, all of the satellite observations available suggest that the actual 1-minute sustained windspeeds were well below the 100 kt (115 mph) claimed.
As far as these are concerned, Ophelia is unlikely to actually be stronger than 80 kt, or 92 mph. This would make it only a Cat 1 hurricane.
Furthermore the National Hurricane Center make no mention of any measurements from hurricane hunter aircraft.
The claims of 115 mph winds appear to rely solely on the estimate of windspeeds made via the intensity estimate from the Dvorak system. Yet this is not backed up by any real world data.
The only real evidence we have available is the central pressure, given as 960 mb:
This pressure is low, but certainly not unduly so, and would in the past have been likely to have been linked with Cat 2 hurricanes.
It also goes without saying that, until the satellite era, storms like this, and in this part of the ocean, would have barely registered on the record. Ships would have kept well away from it, and it would have been too far east for aircraft to flown into.
I do make one prediction.
By the time Ophelia gets anywhere near Ireland, it will be no more than a typical Atlantic storm. We will hear the usual hype about 80mph gusts (but not told that these are limited to a few extremely exposed headlands).
It will be wet and windy in Ireland and parts of Scotland, but the rest of the UK will wonder what the fuss is about.
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October 14, 2017 at 05:36PM
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