| typhoon_tip |
| (Meteorologist) |
| Mon Sep 03 2007 12:32 AM |
Re: Watching Category 4 Hurricane Felix and Area off Georgia
|
Quote:
Sounds like the plane took a major beating during the recent center fix:
BECAUSE OF THE EXTREME TURBULENCE AND GROUPEL [sic] THAT THE AIRCRAFT EXPERIENCED...THE MISSION IS BEING
ABORTED AND THE AIRCRAFT IS RETURNING TO ST. CROIX.
Graupel are small frozen water droplets, like small hail stones. Flying through 160 knot-driven small hail stones would be a pretty stressful experience, for both the plane and for the people on board.
Absolutely! They can use Divorak to prove this is a daisy before they risk pushing up anyway. We do not want to hear about any crews safety being compromised any more than the inherent risk that is involved with this invaluable form of data retrieval.
That being said, I strongly suspect that they took a beating and are a bit thunderstruck at the prospect of doing any more activity on this tonight.
At 165mph, this is just 20mph shy of Wilma, btw, which may help put this into perspective. And, this system is still not yet finished intensifying given to the fact that there are 0 (that's NO) mitigators readily observable at this hour; Felix is about to traverse a +2sigma warm eddy anomaly, too, which is just absolutely....incredible!