An Extreme Event in the Eyewall of Hurricane Felix on 2 September 2007

Abstract

Abstract During a routine penetration into Hurricane Felix late on 2 September 2007, NOAA42 encountered extreme turbulence and graupel, flight-level horizontal wind gusts of over 83 m s−1, and vertical wind speeds varying from 10 m s−1 downward to 31 m s−1 upward and back to nearly 7 m s−1 downward within 1 min. This led the plane to rise nearly 300 m and then return to its original level within that time. Though a dropwindsonde was released during this event, the radars and data systems on board the aircraft were rendered inoperable, limiting the amount of data obtained. The feature observed during the flight is shown to be similar to that encountered during flights into Hurricanes Hugo (1989) and Patricia (2015), and by a dropwindsonde released into a misovortex in Hurricane Isabel (2003). This paper describes a unique dataset of a small-scale feature that appears to be prevalent in very intense tropical cyclones, providing new evidence for eye–eyewall mixing processes that may be related to intensity change.