The New and Improved Hurricane Felix

[Hurricane Felix near peak intensity in early September.]

So finally, the National Hurricane Center has released its definitive report (PDF) on 2007's Hurricane Felix. Definitive reports on Hurricane Dean and Tropical Storm Erin still await. However, the news from the Felix report is quite significant--Felix has been bumped up in intensity, making it the strongest storm recorded in 2007, with 150 knot maximum sustained winds (more than 170 miles per hour).

I did my latest Daily Green item about this. As I wrote:

Why was Felix upgraded? Some of you may recall that the aircraft reconnaissance flight into the storm at its peak had to be aborted due to extreme turbulence and the pelting of the plane with ice pellets. Well, during that penetration of the storm, the plane carried a relatively new instrument, known as the Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR). Normally a storm's maximum sustained winds at the surface are estimated based on the wind speeds at the level at which the aircraft is flying (thousands of feet above the sea surface, for safety reasons), but the SFMR allows for measurement of lower level winds.

On that dangerous flight into Felix, the SFMR initially estimated winds of 163 knots in the storm's northeastern eyewall. But at first the hurricane specialists back in Florida thought there must be something wrong with the data. After poring over it again, though, they decided they had to listen to this newish instrument--which helped them to finally conclude that Felix was more powerful than originally supposed.

Even today, new technology continually helps us better perceive hurricanes...and there are mysteries about the most intense storms that still remain to be resolved.