Myles
Weather Hobbyist
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Posts: 80
Loc: SW FL
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Since there's nothing going on here I figured I'd bring this up. On the NW side of Australia there was a tropical cyclone that made landfall yesterday. Everywhere I went, like the navy site, weather underground, Accuweather, it says this was a strong tropical storm at most with 70 mph winds. I was looking at the sat images of it and thinking to myself there’s no way this is only a tropical storm. Then I found this Australian weather site, weatherzone.com.au, and it had a lot more info on the cyclone including that this was a cat 3 storm with 190 kph(118 mph) winds and a central pressure of 960 mb. The site looks pretty credible so I just wonder what’s going on here?
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Ed Dunham
Former Meteorologist & CFHC Forum Moderator (Ed Passed Away on May 14, 2017)
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Posts: 2565
Loc: Melbourne, FL
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I took a look at the site...and the storm. The site is not official - and the Cyclone was certainly not Cat III. Clare peaked at 09/0000Z with sustained winds of 60 kts and gusts to 75kts, i.e., a strong tropical storm. Follow-on news reports from Perth indicated nothing unusual about Clare (except that Perth was likely to exceed its normal January rainfall total in one day).
I cross-checked against the storm bulletins (courtesy of the University of Hawaii) and found a maximum of 60G75kts. A check of satellite imagery from showed that Clare never formed an eye, so even minimal sustained hurricane strength was not likely.
Hope this helps.
ED
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Clark
Meteorologist
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Posts: 1710
Loc:
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Some of the confusion may be a result of the different scale that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) uses to represent the severity of a given tropical cyclone. A category 3 cyclone on their scale corresponds to what we call a category 1 hurricane. Specifically, wind gusts of 170 km/hr translate to gusts of about 106mph, or sustained winds of 75mph (40% reduction). I believe that the BoM advisories -- which differ from the (and other tropical warning center) advisories -- classified Clare as a "Severe Tropical Cyclone," which is our equivalent of a hurricane, a minimal one in this case.
More information is available at http://www.bom.gov.au/catalogue/warnings/WarningsInformation_TC_Ed.shtml
Hope this helps!
--------------------
Current Tropical Model Output Plots
(or view them on the main page for any active Atlantic storms!)
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Myles
Weather Hobbyist
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Posts: 80
Loc: SW FL
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Thanks for the info. It makes sense that it was a strong tropical storm or a minimal hurricane. I thought everyone used the Saffir-Simpson scale, but I was obviously wrong. I wonder what the 960 number repersented. Im trying to find out what the unit was but I thought it was equal to a millibar. Obviously wrong here too, just another difference in what unit system countries use.
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