A Quick Update on "Cat 4" Idalia: Making Landfall

“Cat 4” Idalia, is coming ashore this morning in Florida. You can see that the strongest storms and winds are seen/found on the NW quadrant of the storm. Usually it’s the NE Quadrant that is the strongest. At the end of the clip above, the intensity of storms found right at the inner eye wall was weakening somewhat but reforming on and strengthening on the NE Quadrant. Here’s the live radar at Wunderground.

There are a couple of amateur weather stations on the barrier islands in that NW quadrant—both remain online signifying that the power has not been knocked offline. Their readings seem plausible and they report basically the same wind speeds on the same barrier island.

All of the strongest outer bands are sweeping through that NW area where there are the homeowner weather stations. Yes, you’re right, they are not “official.”

The NE quadrant stations with lower winds/gusts reported from all of those stations. At the end of the clip above, there is a blob of storms coming ashore, but unfortunately there are no reporting weather stations. The storm is arguably weakening slowly now, possibly sharply as the ocean gets churned and surface sea temperatures decay. Much of the circulation is now over land.

There are fairly widespread power outages, especially in the NW quadrant of the storm (the deepest red color is Wakulla County), This is the county where the weather stations reported below are located :

The highest winds/gusts reported by the stations on the barrier island in Wakulla County, NW of the storm’s eyewall, are 53mph/56 mph and 45mph/55mph. I don’t think it’s going to get any worse at this point. Both of these stations are close to one another, have given very similar readings and both haven’t lost electrical power/internet connection.

This is all data from just a few minutes ago.

Weather Station ID: KFLALLIG2

Station Name:Bald Point

Latitude / Longitude: 29.921° N, 84.335° W
Elevation:48

City:Alligator Point
State: FL

 

Weather Station ID: KFLCARRA24

Station Name: GatorNest22

Latitude / Longitude:29.899° N, 84.39° W
Elevation:20

City: Carrabelle
State:FL

Here’s the headline at the time of this blog’s posting proclaiming that this storm is a Cat 4 or would be expected to have winds of 130 mph to 156 mph, or very devastating winds with massive destruction and power outages (like Hurricane Cleo that I spoke of from my childhood in the previous post.) 

As I have claimed, there appears to be a massive disconnect between the forecasted Cat 4 winds of 130 to 156 mph, vs the reported ~55 to 60 mph winds/gusts. Yes, both of those stations could be wrong, but I don't think they are THAT wrong. Also, I watched them for some time and the readings seemed to match when the strongest of the storm’s bands crossed those locations. The fact that the stations didn’t lose power also corroborates lower-than-hurricane-force winds in that area. The exposed position of the two weather stations, facing the sea, would be expected to see the highest winds (again, in that NW quadrant—where the strongest bands were observed on radar).

Idalia probably wasn’t even a Hurricane at all; and it’s very unlikely that it’s anywhere near a Cat 4.