HURRICANE WILMA

Hurricane Wilma’s trackThe storm caused devastation to Mexico, Cuba, and

Southern Florida

The hurricane name Wilma is RETIRED, it broke many records including :• Lowest recorded pressure

for a tropical cyclone, 882 mbar (26.0 inHg)

• Lowest pressure for any cyclone measured in the Western Hemisphere

• Fastest pressure drop of any storm in the Atlantic (it dropped to 882 mbar in 24 hours)

• Smallest known eye of any Atlantic hurricane (3.7 km diameter at its peak intensity).

MEXICO

• Tens of thousands of tourists in Cozumel & Cancun were moved inland from beach resorts to shelters as the airports were closed due to sustained winds of 140 mph (225km/hr)

• Power in these cities were out, road signs all gone & the streets deserted and flooded .

In only 24 hours Wilma became a Category 5 hurricane with record strength & winds of 185 mph southeast of the

Yucatán Peninsula on October 19, 2005. In Mexico, Wilma set a

24-hour rainfall record with reported 64 inches (1637 mm) of

rainfall.

CUBA

• 21 foot waves crashed on the Western tip of Cuba, where about 7,000 people were evacuated from Pinar Del Rio. (Cows, pigs, sheep, & chickens were also evacuated).

• Given its extended duration in waters close to Cuba, the hurricane’s effects lasted 10 days, causing ocean swells, heavy rain and winds.

THE KEYS October 22nd a mandatory evacuation was put in place for the Florida Keys due to the intensity of the predicted flooding.

The chart at the right shows predicted flooding of Key West, with the various colors indicating flooding of 3-8 ft above sea level. Wilma actually brought about flooding of 4-6 ft above sea level, resulting in the inundation of more than 50 percent of the island.

• In addition to extreme rainfall & storm surge, Wilma also produced 10 tornadoes on its West side. A waterspout also formed near Key West (pictured above) on October 23rd. It was 3 miles off the coast of the island at 1600 EDT and it’s movement was recorded by Doppler radar to be 40 kts towards the North/Northeast. Thankfully it did not come close enough to the island to cause damage.

• The storm surge in the Keys caused a lot of damage. As we can see in the graph the predicted water level did not even reach one foot (the blue line) while the actual water level due to storm surge reached 7 feet ( the red line). Hurricane Wilma caused an estimated $29.1 billion dollars in damaging making it one of the top 5 costliest hurricanes in the Atlantic.

A parking lot of a Naval Air Station in Key West.

• After hitting South Florida on Monday, October 25th, the storm cut power to a record 3.2 million or more Florida homes and businesses, affecting more than 6 million people, and stopped water service to many. A 123 mph gust was reported on Key Biscayne, off Miami.

• Schools in Miami-dade county were closed for 10 days, with schools reopening before most people had power back.

• Wilma emerged from the Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 2 hurricane, but re-intensified to a Category 3 (Oct 24th) as it made its way Northeast towards Florida, making landfall with winds of 120 mph. As Wilma crossed Florida it weakened, hitting us here in Miami as a Cat 2, only to intensify to a 3 once reaching the Atlantic Ocean. The storm finally dissipated on October 26th.

FLORIDA ECONOMY• Hurricane Wilma was not only extremely

costly due to the flood damage, but also to the effects on the citrus industry which took a loss of $180 million.

• The sugar industry in Florida also took a beating of millions of dollars.

• The gas shortages caused South Florida to have the highest gas prices in the country.

• The local economy lost millions of dollars in hotel, restaurant, and retail revenues. The Florida Keys tourism economy suffered for several months after Hurricane Wilma. Commercial fishing industry also suffered huge economic losses.

According to the National Climate Center Data (part of NOAA)

Global Highlights:• Based on preliminary data, globally

averaged combined land and sea surface temperature for October 2005 was warmest on record.

• October temperatures were above average in North America, Asia, Europe and the majority of the African continent. Colder-than-average conditions occurred in Bolivia, Argentina, Turkey, Greenland and western Australia.

• Precipitation during October was above average in the northeastern U.S., the Caribbean, western Europe and southern India, with drier than average conditions in South Africa, the U.S. Mississippi Valley and the majority of eastern Europe.

• Neutral ENSO conditions continued during October

Hurricane Wilma made landfall on the Westcoast of Florida centered at Naples at a Category 3, and made its way to the East coast of Florida as a Category 2. Four days

earlier the National Hurricane Center predicted that this was exactly what would happen. 2005 was an extremely active hurricane season (for that reason we made it all

the way to W), and is the most active season in history.

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IDV REANALYSIS

• These are the same photos from the previous slide but with the Satellite imagery to confirm the storm’s location is accurate.

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IDV REANALYSIS

IDV REANALYSIS

From the movie, we can see the Wilma lingers in the Gulf of Mexico for 3 days intensifying and strengthening. It is the most destructive as it makes landfall in Mexico as a Cat 5 and weakening to a 2, only to reintensify to a 3 before hitting South Florida.

• http://youtu.be/hp7xmK3yCeA

GFS MODEL

• This model shows the pressure system to be much deeper & detailed than the 20th century reanalysis bundle. The low pressure at both times is shown to be about 1300 and 1250 respectively while in the previous slides they were shown to be about 1420 and 1350.

• A "bogussed" vortex is an artificially enhanced vortex. When hurricanes are not bogussed they usually have slower than observed speeds. The slower track speed also delays the development of the low-level convergence zone and development of the upper-level mesoscale jet.

• The GFS uses a similar concept they call “Vortex relocation or surgery”

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Combining PEDA with the GFS model (Vortex Bogussing)

• When vortex bogussing the GFS “A clear advantage of PEDA over conventional 3DVAR in the thermodynamical fields, signifying the benefit of using a flow-dependent background error covariance”.

• As we can see in the chart in the below left, when combining the GFS and PEDA (vortex bogussing) we are presented with a stronger forcast model than when just analyzing the GFS with 3D doppler analysis.

• In fact all models use vortex bogussing except the European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting or ECMWF (Zhang 2011)