Hurricane Irma Reaches 185 MPH, Trailing Only Allen As Strongest Atlantic Storm On Record (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are quickly running out of adjectives to describe the destructive potential of Hurricane Irma. As of 2pm ET on Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the storm's sustained winds to 185mph. This is near-record speed for a storm in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. Such high, sustained winds tie Irma for the second-strongest storm on record in the Atlantic, along with Hurricane Wilma (2005), Hurricane Gilbert (1998), and the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane. Only Hurricane Allen, which reached 190 mph in 1980 before striking a relatively unpopulated area of Texas, reached a higher wind speed. Globally, the all-time record for hurricanes is held by Patricia, which reached a staggering 215 mph in the Pacific Ocean in 2015. Although sustained winds capture the most public attention, meteorologists generally measure the intensity of a storm based upon central pressures, which are considerably lower than sea-level pressure on Earth, 1,013 millibars. Typhoon Tip, in 1979, holds this record at 870 millibars. For now, at least, Irma has a relatively high central pressure of 927 millibars. Why the storm has such an odd wind-speed-pressure relationship isn't entirely clear. According to the National Hurricane Center, Irma is expected to bring catastrophic winds and potential storm surges to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the UK territory of Turks and Caicos this week. The Florida Keys could get hit by late Saturday night or Sunday.

Comments

Camille

[cirby]

...probably reached 200 MPH, but the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi, so they can't count "sustained wind speed."

Re:Camille

[ShanghaiBill]

I remember Camille. My mom woke me up at 2am, and told me to grab everything I own and take it upstairs. The flood waters from the neighborhood creek were already at our front porch. About 10 minutes later, muddy water started gurgling out of the heater vents on the floor of my bedroom. The water rose another 30cm over the next few hours.

My room was a muddy mess the next morning. But it was worth it because school was cancelled for a week.

This was more than 400 km from landfall.

I happened almost exactly a month after Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Re:Camille

[PopeRatzo]

the instruments at Keesler AFB were blown away when Camille hit Biloxi

I just moved out of Houston and I was there for Hurricane Harvey. When it hit Corpus Christie, every weather station from there to Galveston was just blown away. And that was "only" a Category Four.

I never want to be near a hurricane like that again. It scared the crap out of me. We were supposed to have moved (driving to the California Central Coast) the day before Harvey hit, and it obliterated our schedule. Couldn't leave town until a week later when the water receded enough off the highways that one lane of traffic could get out. Tons of people were still evacuating, because the "controlled" release of water from the reservoirs was flooding neighborhoods that hadn't flooded during the initial 50+ inches of rain. It took us the entire first day of driving just to get out of Houston city limits and all together, after a day of driving, we only got as far as College Station.

We just arrived in our new place in Cali today. There are wildfires a few hundred miles away, but here where I am, right on the coast, there's no danger of burning. At least that what I'm told. Screw natural disasters. I don't like 'em one bit, no sir. Did you know that the constant sound of heavy rain on the windows for five solid days can make you completely insane?

Re:Local meterologist

[Geoffrey.landis]

Uh, that's not quite the way hurricanes work. They don't "slam into" something and stop. Caribbean islands are small compared to hurricanes!

They stop when they traverse a region where they are separated from the warm ocean, which is (in essence) their power source.