Poor Madagascar. Another intense cyclone--Jaya--is heading in its direction. This storm, which just three days ago I was predicting would develop, has now intensified much faster than expected. According to the University of Wisconsin folks, it's already a Category 3 storm, with winds of 104 knots and a minimum sea level pressure of 941.2 millibars.
And as you can see, Madagascar may once again be the endzone.
I now pose a scientific question: Has anyone done a study over time of how many hurricanes per year rapidly intensify--by, say, more than 3 categories in 24 hours? I wonder if the results would show a trend. Of course, I'm sure there would be huge data issues.
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Charles Holliday and Aylmer Thompson produced a paper for Monthly Weather Review (v. 107 #8) -- entitled "Climatological Characteristics of Rapidly Intensifying Typhoons" -- that might address some of the question you're asking, and Hadlocka and Kreitzberg wrote an article about an experiment of rapid intensification for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (v. 69 #11) called "The Experiment on Rapidly Intensifying cyclones over the Atlantic (ERICA) Field Study: Objectives and Plans."