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IPFS News Link • Florida

Florida Panhandle Bracing for Category 4 Hit from Michael

• https://www.wunderground.com

Just hours away from an expected Wednesday afternoon landfall, Hurricane Michael became ever stronger and more organized on Tuesday night over the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Michael's high winds, torrential rain, and very large storm surge were pushing briskly toward the Florida Panhandle and the Big Bend region just to the east, the areas in line to experience the worst impacts. Update (2 am EDT Wednesday): Michael has been upgraded to Category 4 strength as of 2 am EDT, with top sustained winds of 130 mph. Some additional strengthening is possible before landfall.

Satellite images of Michael's evolution on Tuesday night were, in a word, jaw-dropping. A massive blister of thunderstorms (convection) erupted and wrapped around the storm's eye, which has taken taking a surprisingly long time to solidify. A layer of dry air several miles above the surface being pulled into Michael from the west may have been one of the factors that kept Michael from sustaining a classic, fully closed eyewall (see embedded tweet below). A closed eyewall is normally a prerequisite for a hurricane to intensify robustly, but somehow Michael managed to reach Category 3 status without one.

While the satellite structure of #Michael continues to look ever more impressive, recon is still finding that the eyewall is not closed in the SW quad. This indicates convection is still weakening before it reaches the upshear flank despite a seemingly textbook IR presentation. pic.twitter.com/R6wZLfd80q

— Philippe Papin (@pppapin) October 10, 2018

Based purely on the Dvorak method, which uses cloud-top temperatures from satellites to estimate hurricane strength, Michael was a Category 4 storm by Tuesday evening. Michael's central pressure dropped from 965 mb at 1 pm EDT to 947 mb at 11 pm, another sign of robust strengthening. However, it can take a few hours for a hurricane's winds to fully respond to changes in the inner core's structure and pressure. A hurricane-hunter mission found flight-level winds of 130 knots (150 mph) and radiometer-estimated surface winds of 110 knots (127 mph) just after 8 pm EDT. In its 11 pm EDT advisory, the National Hurricane Center pegged Michael's top sustained winds at 125 mph, just shy of Category 4 status. Assuming that Michael maintains or improves its structure overnight, these winds are likely to increase in response, and NHC is now predicting that Michael will approach the coast as a Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday morning.


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