You were just fortunate that it was only a weak borderline EF2 tornado at your location. Upper-end EF2, and EF3 risks collapsing buildings. EF3 speeds begin around 160 mph. If you were close to the building those speeds could have collapsed the building on you. If you were farther downwind when it collapesed, you would have been cut to pieces by wind-blown roof debris. Most tornado-caused injuries are from flying debris. Moat deaths are from head injuries. I wouldn't get near a building.
Keep in mind that a hurricane is a type or single-cell convective mesocyclone, a yery wide type of tropical supercell thunderstorm. Not too much on hail but very efficient at tranlsational rotation. It is basically a large type of tornado. They have multiple vortices in their eyewalls as do typical tornadoes(see Andrew's landfall in Florida). They can explosively intensify over hot pockets of shallow coastal/swamp water too(Celia 1970 in Texas, Rita 2005 Louisiana, stronger winds inland).
There are a few videos out there of charley's landfall area that appear to have peak gusst approaching about 130-140 mph, but yours as I described in an earlier post, appears to be no more than 115-120 mph. Also, ground-level winds in hurricanes weaken during landfall much faster than the pressure rises, because winds above the surface are stiil strong. And as I stated in an earlier post charley began an eyewall replacement cycle during landfall that further sped up weakening.
i'm in venice fl just 30 min west of pt charlotte and on the morning of Charlie i spent the day bringing heavy items inside the house in preperation. after i did i was so tired i fell asleep and when i awoke the storm had come and gone. it basically missed us entirely. just goes to show how you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time
@mst3kpimp Hurricane Charley was an extremely compact storm, one reason why the rapid intensification was easier to occur. Had this been a larger storm, the damage would have be crazy. I'm actually glad for the residents it wasn't larger. I like intercepting hurricanes and all, but the death, loss of property, etc. is no fun to watch either. I'm glad you were spared.
I remember my grandparents that live in Florida were talking about moving in the aftermath of the 2004 hurrican season, only to ahve them change their minds after you folks down there had it easy for hurricans season in 2005 and 2006.
If you look at the radar and satellite loops of Charley's landfall you can see an eyewall replacement cycle beginning. an outer eyewall develops and the intense inner eyewall starts to quickly weaken. This spared the area from a possible borderline EF-3 landfall..
BTW, slipstream depth and width varies greatly with the size and shape of structures in the airflow. Vehicles parked on the ground in a building's slipstream can be easily overturned and damaged by the accelerated airflow while the ambient windspeed is not strong enough to do so. Any wind instrument mounted on a building should not be trusted to be reliable. Similar effect to a highway overpass acting like a wind tunnel..
I will add that 175 mph is low-end EF-3 speed. I have been in winds barely bordering on EE-3. I saw a van wrapped around a large steel billboard pole, trees mostly snapped off with the ones still standing stripped bare. I have been pushed about 60 feet down a road on my butt and into a barditch, laid down flat and looked up in time to see a contnuous cloud of huge tree limbs shooting past just above me. They were blown away with no limbs laying anywhere in sight afterwards.
If that wind reading is accurate then the instrument was immersed in the building's slipstream which acts to compress and accelerate airflow over it's surface and thus rendering the reading meaningless. This is the stuff of aeronautical engineers and i'm certainly no engineer, but the leaves are stll on the trees, the honda is upright. light poles still standing tell me the peak gusts in your video are only about 115 to 120 mph-borderline EF-2. Andrew in Cutler Ridge FL, was EF-3.
Immediately that close, yes, I quess they were not that at the "max" however, just to the right of the building is Charlotte Bay, which is nearly obstruction free. At certain times the winds were coming right off the water, and still could have been near the 145+mph peak levels. I can't not confirm anything with true data except for air pressure (which was instrument recorded) because we were not about to stand out there with an anemometer...LOL.
I wuold take the 173 or 174 mph reading with a grain of salt, reminiscent of the 172 mph gust at Biloxi Mississippi during Georges in September 1998, an erroneous reading caused by water blown into the insrument. The winds in this video look like 110-120 mph peak gusts EF-1 to borderline EF-2 at the most. 173 mph would have sent that pickup truck in the background flying and bouncing away. It would have also blasted all of the leaves off of the trees in no time. You might not have survived.
@cape6000jkg That was a Honda Odessey (sp?) and it was extremely lucky. There were a few vehicles flipped nearby and the amount of damage to the vehicles on the opposite side of the Charlotte County Courthouse was pretty bad. The building itself to redirect the winds to some degree. The 175mph has been analyzed and found to be accurate. Further study may even upgrade this storm higher (like they did just a few short years ago with Andrew (from a 4 to a 5).
This video does not belong to the poster. It should be removed immediately. It is not my own video (so I can't Flag it for copyright violation), but is video from my chase partner (who is being notified of the use of this video). It should be removed immediately unless you have recieved express written consent from the owner(s).
so, with winds that strong, how the heck is that minivan staying in one spot? to me, it seems as if it would blow off, flip over, or something....Was anyone inside it?
@oxobrianoxo No one inside. It was very lucky. The mail trucks behind the minivan (a Honda) did shift. Interestingly, they sustained only minor damage.
The building did protect it somewhat, especially from the debris. It isn't impossible to think of a vehicle maintaining it's position in high winds. Consider that you drive down a highway at ~70mph, then cross a semi in the opposite direction also traveling at a similar speed, that is a 140mph crosswind. Aerodynamics FTW.
So anyone out there, what would you say the best guess sustained winds here, and wind gusts. My own personal guess we are seeing gusts in excess of 150mph here, probably approaching 160-165 in the strongest gusts there.
@Bluetailvappy Hurricane Charley was an extremely compact and fast moving storm, making the damage path much more like a very, very wind tornado path.
@WeatherWarriordotnet I remember it like it was yesterday. Mostly because a very powerful cold front blasted through Northern Florida and spared us by curving the storm towards at first, Tampa, then Port Charlotte. We were here enjoying upper 50's at night in Northwest Florida in the middle of August, while ya'll were getting completely hammered down there.
Short of an actual anemometer reading in this exact spot, one way the wind speed could be estimated is through a photogrammetric analysis of the rate of movement of rain or debris aggregates blowing by in the video. IE, how much does a piece of debris move from one frame (or image) to the next during a known quantity of time? Scientists used this method in pre-doppler tornado video studies and came up with acurate estimates measures of velocities within tornado funnels near the ground.
@peakman2006 I did have my anemometer...but I think for obvious reasons...I didn't feel like walking it out to get a reading. I will note though I did get sustained wind measurement ~65mph inside the tunnel/walkway of the Charlotte County Courthouse were this was filmed (I'm the one in the red truck). That was well before the eyewall approached.
Fanastic footage! At 145 mph, that would be a F-2 tornadoe strength. What I don't understand is why the pick-up in the parking lot was blown over...if winds did reach 145 mph, or higher in gusts, the vehicle should have become partially airborn.
Surprisingly it takes at least 250 M.P.H. of wind to even pick-up a small car let alone send it airborne. Remember this is straight line winds; they're not sucking winds like in a tornado.
cbehr91 - I don't know at what wind speed a car or truck would actually become fully airborn: 150, 200, 250 mph?.
I do know that the energy of the wind increases as the cube of the speed. The amount of wind pressure on a vehicle at wind speeds above 100 mph is enough to tip over a truck or car. The wind speeds in this video are amazing. And I know that nearby is a claimed recorded gust of 174mph. I simply question whether the wind gusted to 174 mph in the vid segment here.
It would be neat to find out how much wind it takes. The site that had the 174 gust was the county hospital which is across the street from the courthouse where this was filmed. It also depends on how high or low the profile of the vehicle is. Trucks have a extremely high profile to the ground. So more wind can rush underneath it and pick it up. But I am still shocked that those two Jeep Wranglers were not on their sides after it was over because that's a hell of a lot of wind!
@peakman2006 there are a ton of factors that are involved in wind taking a vehicle over. How turbulent (speed or the wind was, how evenly distributed the wind field, the vehicle shape (drag, lift, etc....like a wing) and the surround elements.
@peakman2006 100mph is OK in some cases. Hell it is apparently OK in 145mph sustained (gusting to 175mph)...as proven here (give or take 5mph). I did not have "official equipment" but the debris motion is insane, and was higher than the next most powerful hurricane I chased, Hurricane Jeanne & Hurricane Ike.
@WeatherWarriordotnet - I'm not in any way diminishing this video. It is one of the top two or three videos I've seen that captures and portrays the chaotic violence and sheer power of a powerful hurricane near the eyewall.
I am, however, doubting that in this video, the images captured winds of 145 mph, never mind gusts to 170+mph. From a purely objective point of view, had the wind reached those extreme values, the trees should have been snapped or uprooted, and the truck rolled over.
@peakman2006 I can't necessarily confirm or deny that the winds were at that level because we didn't officially measure them. Only that I've been in multiple hurricanes and experienced what was officially recorded at 100 to 110 mph (by my own hand/instrument measure) and this was way more intense.
Don't just consider the near field of this image, but in the documentary we produced, just blocks over you can see complete roofs being blown of buildings and complete structural failure of others.
@ucantwin2000 Yeah, we were outside for much of the first half of the eye. It is partly knowing how to chase right (I am also an architect and can assess the likelihood of structural rigidity, analyze wind flow, etc. quickly) and a bit of luck. The spot we were physically in was protected a bit, not completely though. Others in the team were in a more dangerous position.
@torontostorms If you are referring to the constant light fluctuations, that was simply the affect of the camera that was too slow to automatically adjust the exposure for the extremely fast pasted environment. It is partly due to the rain curtains flashing by and an extreme rate of speed too.
As many as odd that the lantern is held
Zima4184 2 months ago
An empty parking lot is not the most interesting place to watch.
TheBucksco18966 1 year ago
wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow
clubpenguineverywere 1 year ago
You were just fortunate that it was only a weak borderline EF2 tornado at your location. Upper-end EF2, and EF3 risks collapsing buildings. EF3 speeds begin around 160 mph. If you were close to the building those speeds could have collapsed the building on you. If you were farther downwind when it collapesed, you would have been cut to pieces by wind-blown roof debris. Most tornado-caused injuries are from flying debris. Moat deaths are from head injuries. I wouldn't get near a building.
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
Keep in mind that a hurricane is a type or single-cell convective mesocyclone, a yery wide type of tropical supercell thunderstorm. Not too much on hail but very efficient at tranlsational rotation. It is basically a large type of tornado. They have multiple vortices in their eyewalls as do typical tornadoes(see Andrew's landfall in Florida). They can explosively intensify over hot pockets of shallow coastal/swamp water too(Celia 1970 in Texas, Rita 2005 Louisiana, stronger winds inland).
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
There are a few videos out there of charley's landfall area that appear to have peak gusst approaching about 130-140 mph, but yours as I described in an earlier post, appears to be no more than 115-120 mph. Also, ground-level winds in hurricanes weaken during landfall much faster than the pressure rises, because winds above the surface are stiil strong. And as I stated in an earlier post charley began an eyewall replacement cycle during landfall that further sped up weakening.
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
i'm in venice fl just 30 min west of pt charlotte and on the morning of Charlie i spent the day bringing heavy items inside the house in preperation. after i did i was so tired i fell asleep and when i awoke the storm had come and gone. it basically missed us entirely. just goes to show how you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time
mst3kpimp 1 year ago
@mst3kpimp Hurricane Charley was an extremely compact storm, one reason why the rapid intensification was easier to occur. Had this been a larger storm, the damage would have be crazy. I'm actually glad for the residents it wasn't larger. I like intercepting hurricanes and all, but the death, loss of property, etc. is no fun to watch either. I'm glad you were spared.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
I remember my grandparents that live in Florida were talking about moving in the aftermath of the 2004 hurrican season, only to ahve them change their minds after you folks down there had it easy for hurricans season in 2005 and 2006.
DracoVader 1 year ago
D-DAMN. OH NOES THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
easalert88 1 year ago
Ladies and gentlemen-the apocalypse has arrived.
WSAM0TV 1 year ago
If you look at the radar and satellite loops of Charley's landfall you can see an eyewall replacement cycle beginning. an outer eyewall develops and the intense inner eyewall starts to quickly weaken. This spared the area from a possible borderline EF-3 landfall..
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
BTW, slipstream depth and width varies greatly with the size and shape of structures in the airflow. Vehicles parked on the ground in a building's slipstream can be easily overturned and damaged by the accelerated airflow while the ambient windspeed is not strong enough to do so. Any wind instrument mounted on a building should not be trusted to be reliable. Similar effect to a highway overpass acting like a wind tunnel..
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
I will add that 175 mph is low-end EF-3 speed. I have been in winds barely bordering on EE-3. I saw a van wrapped around a large steel billboard pole, trees mostly snapped off with the ones still standing stripped bare. I have been pushed about 60 feet down a road on my butt and into a barditch, laid down flat and looked up in time to see a contnuous cloud of huge tree limbs shooting past just above me. They were blown away with no limbs laying anywhere in sight afterwards.
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
If that wind reading is accurate then the instrument was immersed in the building's slipstream which acts to compress and accelerate airflow over it's surface and thus rendering the reading meaningless. This is the stuff of aeronautical engineers and i'm certainly no engineer, but the leaves are stll on the trees, the honda is upright. light poles still standing tell me the peak gusts in your video are only about 115 to 120 mph-borderline EF-2. Andrew in Cutler Ridge FL, was EF-3.
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
@cape6000jkg
Immediately that close, yes, I quess they were not that at the "max" however, just to the right of the building is Charlotte Bay, which is nearly obstruction free. At certain times the winds were coming right off the water, and still could have been near the 145+mph peak levels. I can't not confirm anything with true data except for air pressure (which was instrument recorded) because we were not about to stand out there with an anemometer...LOL.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
I wuold take the 173 or 174 mph reading with a grain of salt, reminiscent of the 172 mph gust at Biloxi Mississippi during Georges in September 1998, an erroneous reading caused by water blown into the insrument. The winds in this video look like 110-120 mph peak gusts EF-1 to borderline EF-2 at the most. 173 mph would have sent that pickup truck in the background flying and bouncing away. It would have also blasted all of the leaves off of the trees in no time. You might not have survived.
cape6000jkg 1 year ago
@cape6000jkg That was a Honda Odessey (sp?) and it was extremely lucky. There were a few vehicles flipped nearby and the amount of damage to the vehicles on the opposite side of the Charlotte County Courthouse was pretty bad. The building itself to redirect the winds to some degree. The 175mph has been analyzed and found to be accurate. Further study may even upgrade this storm higher (like they did just a few short years ago with Andrew (from a 4 to a 5).
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
This video does not belong to the poster. It should be removed immediately. It is not my own video (so I can't Flag it for copyright violation), but is video from my chase partner (who is being notified of the use of this video). It should be removed immediately unless you have recieved express written consent from the owner(s).
WeatherWarriordotnet 2 years ago
oh take the stick out :-p
SurvivorQT 2 years ago
so, with winds that strong, how the heck is that minivan staying in one spot? to me, it seems as if it would blow off, flip over, or something....Was anyone inside it?
oxobrianoxo 3 years ago
@oxobrianoxo No one inside. It was very lucky. The mail trucks behind the minivan (a Honda) did shift. Interestingly, they sustained only minor damage.
The building did protect it somewhat, especially from the debris. It isn't impossible to think of a vehicle maintaining it's position in high winds. Consider that you drive down a highway at ~70mph, then cross a semi in the opposite direction also traveling at a similar speed, that is a 140mph crosswind. Aerodynamics FTW.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
So anyone out there, what would you say the best guess sustained winds here, and wind gusts. My own personal guess we are seeing gusts in excess of 150mph here, probably approaching 160-165 in the strongest gusts there.
Bluetailvappy 3 years ago
The strongest gust recorded at this location was 174 M.P.H.
cbehr91 3 years ago
What's amazing is, the small size of the eye and eyewall. Correct me if I';m wrong but only 10 miles away it was a whole other story as far as wind.
Bluetailvappy 3 years ago
I'm not sure; I wasn't there. But you're probably right. There will still some pretty nasty squalls. Fort Myers got 125 M.P.H. winds.
cbehr91 3 years ago
@Bluetailvappy Hurricane Charley was an extremely compact and fast moving storm, making the damage path much more like a very, very wind tornado path.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
@WeatherWarriordotnet I remember it like it was yesterday. Mostly because a very powerful cold front blasted through Northern Florida and spared us by curving the storm towards at first, Tampa, then Port Charlotte. We were here enjoying upper 50's at night in Northwest Florida in the middle of August, while ya'll were getting completely hammered down there.
Bluetailvappy 1 year ago
Short of an actual anemometer reading in this exact spot, one way the wind speed could be estimated is through a photogrammetric analysis of the rate of movement of rain or debris aggregates blowing by in the video. IE, how much does a piece of debris move from one frame (or image) to the next during a known quantity of time? Scientists used this method in pre-doppler tornado video studies and came up with acurate estimates measures of velocities within tornado funnels near the ground.
peakman2006 3 years ago
@peakman2006 I did have my anemometer...but I think for obvious reasons...I didn't feel like walking it out to get a reading. I will note though I did get sustained wind measurement ~65mph inside the tunnel/walkway of the Charlotte County Courthouse were this was filmed (I'm the one in the red truck). That was well before the eyewall approached.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
i was hoping that light pole would fall down...awesome footage tho
AeroStorm911 3 years ago
Fanastic footage! At 145 mph, that would be a F-2 tornadoe strength. What I don't understand is why the pick-up in the parking lot was blown over...if winds did reach 145 mph, or higher in gusts, the vehicle should have become partially airborn.
peakman2006 4 years ago
Surprisingly it takes at least 250 M.P.H. of wind to even pick-up a small car let alone send it airborne. Remember this is straight line winds; they're not sucking winds like in a tornado.
cbehr91 3 years ago
cbehr91 - I don't know at what wind speed a car or truck would actually become fully airborn: 150, 200, 250 mph?.
I do know that the energy of the wind increases as the cube of the speed. The amount of wind pressure on a vehicle at wind speeds above 100 mph is enough to tip over a truck or car. The wind speeds in this video are amazing. And I know that nearby is a claimed recorded gust of 174mph. I simply question whether the wind gusted to 174 mph in the vid segment here.
peakman2006 3 years ago
It would be neat to find out how much wind it takes. The site that had the 174 gust was the county hospital which is across the street from the courthouse where this was filmed. It also depends on how high or low the profile of the vehicle is. Trucks have a extremely high profile to the ground. So more wind can rush underneath it and pick it up. But I am still shocked that those two Jeep Wranglers were not on their sides after it was over because that's a hell of a lot of wind!
cbehr91 3 years ago
@peakman2006 there are a ton of factors that are involved in wind taking a vehicle over. How turbulent (speed or the wind was, how evenly distributed the wind field, the vehicle shape (drag, lift, etc....like a wing) and the surround elements.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
@peakman2006 100mph is OK in some cases. Hell it is apparently OK in 145mph sustained (gusting to 175mph)...as proven here (give or take 5mph). I did not have "official equipment" but the debris motion is insane, and was higher than the next most powerful hurricane I chased, Hurricane Jeanne & Hurricane Ike.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
@WeatherWarriordotnet - I'm not in any way diminishing this video. It is one of the top two or three videos I've seen that captures and portrays the chaotic violence and sheer power of a powerful hurricane near the eyewall.
I am, however, doubting that in this video, the images captured winds of 145 mph, never mind gusts to 170+mph. From a purely objective point of view, had the wind reached those extreme values, the trees should have been snapped or uprooted, and the truck rolled over.
peakman2006 1 year ago
@peakman2006 I can't necessarily confirm or deny that the winds were at that level because we didn't officially measure them. Only that I've been in multiple hurricanes and experienced what was officially recorded at 100 to 110 mph (by my own hand/instrument measure) and this was way more intense.
Don't just consider the near field of this image, but in the documentary we produced, just blocks over you can see complete roofs being blown of buildings and complete structural failure of others.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
were you standing outside? you have some balls of steel
ucantwin2000 4 years ago
@ucantwin2000 Yeah, we were outside for much of the first half of the eye. It is partly knowing how to chase right (I am also an architect and can assess the likelihood of structural rigidity, analyze wind flow, etc. quickly) and a bit of luck. The spot we were physically in was protected a bit, not completely though. Others in the team were in a more dangerous position.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
Look loke a good day to learn windsurfing !! :P
miltabib 4 years ago
@miltabib Nah, we save that for the weak hurricanes...LOL.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago
There seemed to have been a lot of lightning with this storm.
torontostorms 4 years ago
@torontostorms If you are referring to the constant light fluctuations, that was simply the affect of the camera that was too slow to automatically adjust the exposure for the extremely fast pasted environment. It is partly due to the rain curtains flashing by and an extreme rate of speed too.
WeatherWarriordotnet 1 year ago