Real Climate Science

http://abcnews.go.com/

Gusts at NCAR’s Foothills Lab were clocked at 75 miles per hour, while 80-mph winds were recorded about 25 miles north of Boulder. Some NCAR employees who were blown across the parking lot or observed windows shaking in the Mesa Lab estimate that gusts on the mesa might have been as high as 100 mph.

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/news/03/fotoweek/1117.wind.html

There have not been any recent SFMR data…but based on the earlier sharp discrepancy between the flight-level and surface winds…the initial intensity is reduced to 70 kt. A slow weakening is expected as Irene moves along the coast of the mid-Atlantic states due to land interaction…colder waters…dry air entrainment…and increasing southwesterly shear. Because the large wind field will take time to spin down…however…Irene is still expected to reach the New York area at or near hurricane strength.

More so than with most storms…the winds with Irene increase sharply with height above the surface. As Irene moves through areas with high-rise structures…these structures will experience winds significantly stronger than indicated by the advisory intensity. Winds at the 30-story level will likely be 20 percent higher than at the surface…and winds 80-100 stories up could be about 30 percent higher than at the surface.

http://weather.herald.com/

h/t to David

Some of the worst storms in Texas have been tropical storms, rather than hurricanes. A slow moving tropical storm can dump huge amounts of rain.

The costliest storm in Colorado history was on July 11, 1990, with $625 million in insured hail damage, or about $1 billion in today’s dollars, association Executive Director Carole Walker said.

http://www.aspentimes.com/

BULLETIN
HURRICANE IRENE INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY NUMBER 30ANWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL 092011 700 PM EDT SAT AUG 27 2011

RENE IS A LARGE TROPICAL CYCLONE. HURRICANE-FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 85 MILES…140 KM…FROM THE CENTER

The highest I see within 80 miles (red circle) is 45 MPH

The Cedar Island Ferry Terminal measured sustained winds of 90 mph, gusting to 110 mph at 7:19am, and a trained spotter on Atlantic Beach measured sustained winds of 85 mph, gusting to 101 mph at 10:35 am. The Hurricane Hunters measured 80 mph winds over water at the time of landfall. Winds at the Cape Lookout, North Carolina buoy, which the eye passed directly over, peaked at 67 mph as Irene made landfall.

http://www.wunderground.com/

Dixxy says:

August 27, 2011 at 10:25 pm

Joe Bastardi says:

August 27, 2011 at 4:05 pm

LESS THAN FLOYD OR FRAN

An agent for State Farm, the country’s largest property insurer, said he was surprised at the intensity of the wind and the duration of the storm, but he added that Irene so far seemed to have done less damage than 1996’s Hurricane Fran or 1999’s Floyd.

“There’s a lot of trees down, a lot of power outages, a lot of shingles missing but I didn’t see any huge structural damage as we saw in Fran,” said David Hull, whose Jacksonville, North Carolina home had already been without power for 14 hours. He said utility company crews were already out in his neighborhood assessing damage.

http://www.reuters.com/