Barb Beier wrote:

This is probably not a bright question, but it does come up as I sit
here in west Alabama watching Frances go to pieces along the state
border to the east, so here it is.

In the current forecast discussion, they mention an interesting fact
that the rain shield is rotating, north at the time of the discussion,
and now possibly more to the west. That and the proximity of these
storm remnants got me wondering if there's anything scientists can
learn about hurricane/tropical cyclone structure and even formation
while watching one disintegrate inland, particularly one like Frances
that kept a strong rotation for so long, even though the situation and
processes inland obviously are so very different; that is, do basic
characteristics or patterns (or whatever the correct word for the
"bare bones" of such storms is) become more apparent, even very
briefly, once the overlay of the mature structure are gone, allowing
scientists to do some "reverse engineering" modeling, so to speak, or
is it more of just a complete dissolution through and through that
reveals more about inland weather processes than about anything
tropical?

Barb

An interesting thought. Certainly the fact that tropical storms do
decay over land tells us something about tropical storms, e.g. they
need a close source of lots of hot, humid air. When we learned that
fact and whether it was deduced from the observation that tropical
storms decay over land is a historical question for which I don't
have the answer. I don't know if there is anything "new" we can
learn exclusively from the observations of decaying tropical storms
over land, but I'm not an expert. It would seem likely that such
topics as the development of tropical storms would best be studied
by directly observing those processes. My first reaction is that
frictional processes and topography over land would complicate more
than other differences might help reveal. But I could be wrong, and
I'd be happy to hear about any work being done along this direction
since I'd obviously be learning something new.

Cheers,
Russell
--
All too often the study of data requires care.