While it's still fresh, I'd like to type out a few of the
more interesting observations of Hurricane Wilma.


"I've got these things down pat"

I proudly thought as I sat down to my last warm meal
before the power went out. Managed to finish cooking
breakfast just a couple of minutes before it went dark.
Had to finish eating by candlelight. Been there, done that
I crowed.

At that point the gusts were hitting maybe fifty knots or so.
Which meant I had just enough time to set up a bunker
in the bathtub. Get the parrot in there, titles to car etc
and get comfy. Being fascinated by these things I decided
to stay out and watch as long as it was safe.

But once the gusts starting kicking up it became clear
the windows were teetering on blowing out, or in, as
the case may be. The sliding glass window was bellowing
in and out by a couple of inches depending on the
pressure at the time. A gust at the glass would want to
blow it in, while one that's at a different angle would
want to suck it out. It appeared having one break would
be a bit like decompressing, there'd be glass and objects
suddenly flying about, so I retreated to the only safe place
from flying glass, to the tub at about 8 am.


In the bathroom sound became the only way to observe.

As the storm approached, a very interesting trend of highly
consistent lulls and peaks of wind intensity set in. The lulls
became shorter, and the peaks stronger with each passing
cycle. With each being very consistent in changing duration and
intensity. The most common period was a lull of maybe
twenty seconds with a following gust twice that long.
This trend lasted for about an hour and a half while
the storm approached, and the same amount of time, but
a mirror image, as it moved off.

In an eastward storm the southern half provides the main
pipeline of air feeding the vortex. In this massive hurricane the
feeding sea of air was almost a hundred miles across. It became clear
it had separated into adjacent bands of differing velocities
as it spiraled in. Analogous to a ring system around a planet.

I've witnessed the same effect during Hurricane Andrew and
Katrina, but it was more like a few successive squall lines.
The massive size of Wilma, almost 250 miles across, produced
this effect in far greater number and symmetry.

I couldn't really count them, but once the storm reached
hurricane force, this cycle of lulls and peaks numbered at least
twenty or thirty on each side, building up then down.

I'll try to describe one cycle as best I can.

With each lull came a prayer. "Is that the eye?" "Please Lord
let that be the eye". The last pic of the storm before the power
went out showed it was jogging a bit south and the eye might
pass overhead. Which would be good news, if my building could
take the leading edge it could make it through the trailing edge too
and it'd be over. Having the eye pass north meant the dreaded
southern eye wall would be sweeping by instead. Which means
a very long storm.

With each gust came another prayer. "Please Lord let this gust
be less, not more, than the last." Which would mean the storm
was finally retreating and it'd be over.

Each lull the wind would die off to maybe 30 knots or so. A significant
reduction. Each gust was preceded by a rather ominous roar.
When it hit, the first noise was the banging of the interior doors
for about ten seconds. Even though the windows were still sealed, the
shaking of the building caused the doors to bang as if someone
was knocking furiously to get in. All four doors together made
it rather noisy. The bathroom vent would howl and the toilet
would gurgle surprisingly loudly as the water was being sucked
out. Only the strongest gusts made the toiled 'sing' which
provided a nice barometer. If the toilet stays quiet I can relax.

At this point I noticed something rather odd. I was laying on my
back in the tub rather nicely, and after the doors stopped
banging, my shoulders would begin gently bouncing off each side
of the tub. Many times this happened, and for about five to ten seconds
I could feel a side to side movement of the building.
Which seemed unlikely for a rigid three story concrete block
building. Shaking and shuddering yes. But this was different.
It was a slow buttery-smooth movement from side to side lasting
up to ten seconds. With each period being a second or two.
This was during the very peak of the storm.

I couldn't fathom wind gusts causing earthquake-like motion
and assumed the building was coming apart instead. That is
until I decided I just couldn't sit there the whole time and
not take a peek outside during the height of the hurricane.
I just had to see what it looked like at the strongest point
of such a rare massive hurricane

So I waited for a lull and quickly ran to the sliding glass
window and opened it up just enough to stick my head out.
I planned to look for two things. One was the structural
condition of the building next door. And the other was
the wind direction to see if the eye was coming or the
southern eye wall.

The building was mostly ok, and the wind unfortunately from the west.
I looked up at the clouds, rather low while clouds in the
distinctive shape of a large semi-circle. Curved somewhat
away from me from one horizon to the other and banded along
it's length. I've never seen that before.

Then I saw something I'll never forget.

It was a gust. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a wall of water and wind
reaching to the clouds that looked more like the spray at the end of a
water hose. Except is was moving faster than you could watch.
It was the edge, a wall, of one of those bands sweeping across
from left to right while moving towards the complex at shock wave
like speeds. I spotted just a glimpse of it at about a hundred yards
and only had time to duck and run before it hit.

Now I could understand the movement of the ground.
Such a dense wall of water-soaked wind hitting numerous
buildings almost simultaneously could certainly impart
enough energy to make the ground sway. If a few hundred
pounds of explosives blasting out foundations nearby could shake
my building and make it sway, so could such dense and
explosive gusts.

I ran back into the bathroom rather flustered at that point and said out loud
"I'm convinced now, I'm staying in here till it's over"

I went back to listening to the cacophony of noises wax and wane
as they had. Constant roaring, banging, whistling, gurgling and
the occasional bang that sounded like someone had just
bowled a strike on the roof. Something would hit the roof and
the large ceramic shingles would flutter away in the wind.
It sounded like a bowling alley up there.

Then something rather dramatic happened after that.
A lull set in, except the wind didn't go from it's usual
100 knots to 30'ish. It went to completely ZERO in
a couple of seconds. Two hours of constant noise
and it became completely and suddenly silent for about
five to ten seconds.

I lifted my head up and "what the f " I could hear a pin drop
at the peak of the hurricane. Then just as suddenly came the
roar, bangs and back to normal.

The tornadoes form in the lulls I think. It happened exactly
the same way five or ten minutes later. The gusts
just before and after these two 'moments of silence'
were a bit less then the norm at the time. So I would suspect
these two tornadoes were fairly weak f zero or f one
in strength. I'm guessing they were 80 knot tornadoes
but larger in diameter than normal tornadoes of that
strength. I think these hurricane tornadoes spin up
in the eddies between the concentric bands of wind
spiraling into the eye.

Anyways, fix a couple of windows, a little water damage
and I'm ready for the next one. After this one South Florida
is almost hurricane proof. All the older buildings have
been culled over the years, and only post-Andrew code
buildings are left.





Jonathan

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