55th Anniversary of Hurricane Flora

On the night of October 3, 1963, Hurricane Flora smashed into the southern coast of Haiti.  It raked the country with 145 mph (230 km/hr) winds and dumped tremendous downpours on its mountains.  It would become one of the deadliest and wettest Atlantic hurricanes on record. Flora began as an African easterly wave, moving over …

Paper on a new set of small satellites to measure temperature, humidity, and precipitation in tropical cyclones released online in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society

Read about the satellites at https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.3290.

35th Anniversary of Hurricane Alicia

In the early morning hours of August 18, 1983, Hurricane Alicia made landfall at San Luis Pass, Texas, just southwest of the Galveston area.  Its 115 mph (185 km/hr) winds slammed the high rises of Houston leaving billions of dollars in damage in its wake. Like many tropical storms that form during low-activity years, Alicia …

AOML and HRD researchers at 33rd AMS Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, Ponte Vedra, FL – 15-20 April 2018

Thirty-one AOML and HRD scientists participated in the recent 33rd AMS Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in Ponte Vedra, FL, as authors or co-authors on 65 presentations and 19 posters. Roughly 783 presentations (507 oral presentations in 67 sessions and 276 posters in 2 session) were submitted to the conference. Of the 567 TC-related presentations …

5th anniversary of Typhoon Vicente

Typhoon Vicente made landfall in Southern China late on 23 July, 2012, as a category-4 typhoon, the strongest to hit southern China in recent years.  Six days earlier, an area of cloudiness east of the northern Philippines started to slowly organize.  As it passed into the South China Sea, it gained enough intensity and organization …

15th Anniversary of Super Typhoon Chataan

Over the period of June 27-July 2, 2002, a developing tropical system, later to become Super Typhoon Chataan, dumped heavy rains on the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) causing the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the Chuuk Islands (previously known as the Truk Islands). The disturbance formed from a monsoonal trough that had …

60th Anniversary of Hurricane Audrey

In the morning hours of June 27, 1957, Hurricane Audrey sent a 12-foot (3.7-m) storm surge over Cameron, Louisiana, as the storm lashed the area with 125 mph (205 km/hr) winds. Many residents were caught by surprise and had not evacuated, and the storm took some 400 lives. Audrey was an unusual June storm.  It …

45th Anniversary of Hurricane Agnes

On June 19, 1972, a minimal Category-One hurricane named Agnes came ashore near Panama City, Florida.  While wind and storm-surge damage along the coast was small, the major impact from Agnes came afterward. Agnes developed from a disturbance over the Yucatan peninsula on June 14th.  As the system drifted eastward over the Yucatan Channel, it …

Greater Miami AMS Chapter/HRD Seminar – Dr. Frank Marks, AOML/HRD – 26 April 2017

The Greater Miami Chapter of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) held their meeting Wednesday, April 26, 2017 at the AOML Laboratory.  The featured speaker was Dr. Frank Marks,  Director of the AOML/Hurricane Research Division. Dr. Marks presented a seminar on “Landfalling Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Distributions". Abstract: Rainfall-induced freshwater flooding associated with landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) …

HRD Monthly Science Meeting of April 2017

April’s science meeting consisted of 6 presentations: Gus Alaka: 2016 Basin-Scale HWRF MET-TC Verification 2016 Atlantic Basin Xuejin Zhang: Basin-scale HWRF Verification Mu-Chieh Ko (Laura): HIWPP Precipitation Evaluation – Selected cases of 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season Kathryn Sellwood: Assimilating Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) Surface Wind Speeds for Analyses and Forecasts of Tropical Cyclones Pete Finocchio …