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Hurricane IAN and winds aloft

Ed_Wischmeyer

Well Known Member
First of all, condolences to those who were pounded in Florida. I know two people there... and to those who are getting drenched in the Carolinas.

Savannah was spared, as Ian rotated by off shore. Highest reported gust at the Savannah airport was 40 kt, and at Hunter, 5 nm away, 30 knots. Only occasional light rain at my house, 8 miles inland.

But I was wondering about winds aloft... Foreflight has a winds aloft feature that I use on the iPhone, my only online winds aloft readout. This morning, Friday, with Ian well offshore, Savannah surface winds are 17G27, but at 3,000 feet, winds are 61 knots. Not quite enough for an RV-12 to join the 200 knot club, but impressive. Even more interesting is that winds at 12,000 feet are only 18 knots, and at 24,000 feet, 8 (eight) knots.

Yesterday, with comparable surface winds, winds at 21,000 feet were 3 (three) knots.

Right after I moved to Georgia, the Cessna 175 was damaged by a thunderstorm with gusts reported as 74 knots, right up the tail.
 
Strange winds

I moved a Pilatus out of Saint Simons Wednesday. Surface winds were already 22G29 kts. Light chop. Winds at 2000, 46 knots, at 4000, 56 kts, at 4600 16 kts, almost all smooth to lt chop.
Returning a couple hours later winds at altitude less than 20 all the way down to 4000, then began rapidly increasing back up to just shy of 50 kts. Remarkably smooth for the amount of increase down low. Landed on rwy 4 with winds 030 28G39 and relatively smooth with real low ground speed…
 
Hurricane Hunter pilot on the news here said it was the worst flight he'd ever done, and he almost lost control several times. Unreal.
 
Not quite winds aloft, but an impressive METAR.
 

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Don’t know how accurate the ‘Windy’ app is,
I was checking the wind charts when Ian’s eye was making landfall in Florida, Windy was reporting 70 - 80knots surface winds and at 1000ft Windy was reading nearly twice that speed at about 150knots & gradual speed increases as the app was set at higher altitudes. At the same time news media was reporting 120mph wind speeds.
I assume Windy isn’t factoring in gusts(?) & maybe the news guys are are only talking gust speeds?
 
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