Damage report from Galveston tornado

Meteorologists from the Houston-Galveston National Weather Serice office surveyed the damage caused by the tornado in Galveston Sunday evening. A waterspout moved ashore just before 10 PM and damaged several buildings on the front side of the island.

Here is the NWS report, edited for punctuation:

At around 9:48 pm on Sunday, August 30, a waterspout moved onshore on Galveston Island near the intersection of 29th Street and Seawall Blvd. The tornado then produced an intermittent damage path for about one third of a mile to the northwest, ending near the intersection of 31st street and Avenue R. Several structures were damaged including the Dolphin World souvenir shop where windows were shattered and most of the metal roof was peeled off. A Galveston police department patrol car had its windows blown out in the same area. Heading further inland, the tornado pushed over a home on stilts and removed most of the roof of a mobile home. Another home at the intersection of 31st Street and Avenue R had its roof completely removed. Beyond this location damage was limited to small tree limbs and some shingles removed from roofs.

The observed damage suggests wind speeds in the 80 to 90 mph range, with maximum winds leading to an EF-1 rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Damage path length was around one third of a mile, with a width of around 100 feet. There were three injuries reported. Two police officers, who were in the patrol car when its windows shattered were treated and released. Another man who was thrown against a wall remains hospitalized at UTMB.

Click here to see video of the damage.

Galveston waterspout causes damage

A few homes that survived Hurricane Ike were severely damaged by a waterspout that moved ashore in Galveston late Sunday evening.

Eyewitnesses tell us two different waterspouts developed just before 10 PM over the Gulf of Mexico. One of them moved ashore near 29th and Seawall.  The twister tore the roof off a souvenir shop and a few homes lost their roofs and suffered significant damage. Several thousand people were left without power.

Three people were injured in the storm, including two police officers whose car windows were blown out by the flying debris.

Click here to see video of the damage.

Photo courtesy of Steven Kelley.

Drought conditions improve for some

According to the USDA and NOAA, 52% of the state of Texas is dry. Devastating drought conditions cover almost 29% of the state. The weather patterns have shifted a little, allowing scattered rain to fall. That's more than we had earlier in the summer, but it's still not enough. 

Recent rainfall in east Texas has helped some, but we still rain in many areas. Most of central Texas and communities west of Houston are exceptionally dry.

Since June 1, only 4.72" of rain has fallen at Bush Intercontinental Airport. That's 7.22" below normal Over that same period, only 3.22" of rain has fallen at Scholes Airport in Galveston. Galveston is 7.97" below normal.

 The extreme heat is evaporating the moisture about as quickly as it falls. We've done some more number crunching and it looks like the summer of 2009 will be the hottest on record. Here's how this year compares with 1980 and 1998, two other extremely hot years:

• 2009  Average temperature 86.9°
• 1980  Average temperature 86.4°
• 1998  Average temperature 85.6°

(For the sake of simplifying weather records, meteorologists and climatologists consider summer to be from June 1 through August 31.)

Remembering Hurricane Katrina

Four years ago today we were tracking Hurricane Katrina.

The day before landfall, the mighty storm was a category five hurricane, the strongest on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale. Winds were estimated to be 160 mph, with higher gusts. The National Hurricane Center issued statements using a rarely used phrase, calling the storm "potentially catastrophic."

The storm weakened just before it made landfall near Buras, Louisiana at 6:10 AM August 29, 2005. Sustained winds were calculated to be about 120 mph in Buras, meaning Katrina was a category three storm when it crossed the coast.

A slight shift to the east spared New Orleans from the worst of the wind. The strongest recorded wind gust was 135 mph in Poplarville, MS.  Southern Mississippi was also hit with the worst of the water; a storm surge of 24-28' above sea level swept across a 20-mile wide swath, completely destroying much of the historic coastline.

But the images of Katrina that most people remember came from New Orleans. The damage here was caused by a breech in the levee system that allowed water from Lake Pontchartrain to pour into the city.

With total damage estimated to be about $81 billion dollars, Hurricane Katrina is the costliest storm on record.  (Hurricane Ike is the fourth costliest on record with damage near $18 billion.) Over 1800 people died in Hurricane Katrina.

Click here on the embedded links above to access the full archive of reports from the National Hurricane Center. Click here for a collection on articles published by NASA on Hurricane Katrina.

Photos courtesy of NOAA.

Hurricane Hunters fly through Tropical Storm Danny

Winds are blowing 45-50 mph in Tropical Storm Danny, according to data collected by NOAA Hurricane Hunters Wednesday afternoon. The wind speeds are plotted here along the flight path.

The center of the storm is not where you see the brightest clouds; the low pressure circulation is to left of the large plume of clouds. The Hurricane Hunters flew through the center of the storm twice, which is typical of reconnaissance flights. You'll notice the wind speeds in the storm center are much weaker than winds within the heavy thundershowers.

Danny is a very weak storm so the pilot is flying the plane very low, only about 1500' above the ground. Another flight at higher altitudes is planned for later today to measure the atmosphere around the storm. The data from that flight will also be used to help forecast the future intensity of this storm.

Track the storm online with our new Interactive Hurricane Tracking.

I'm also posting updates on Twitter, a free social-networking website. To see what all the fuss is about, click here and register for a free username. If you follow "abc13weather" my updates will appear on your Twitter page as soon as I write them. If you're away from your computer, you can also follow along on your cellphone.  In addition to tropical weather updates, I also post daily forecast information. Try it out! 

Peak of hurricane season starts now

This is the beginning of what is usually the most active time in the tropics. The peak of hurricane season runs from August 24 through September 15, peaking on September 10.

Historically, many of the major hurricanes that have hit southeast Texas developed during this time period. Hurricane Ike made landfall last year on September 13. Hurricane Carla, which was more powerful than Ike, developed during the peak of the season in 1961, making landfall on September 10 near Matagorda Bay. The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 surged ashore on September 8, 1900.

The map below shows where storms have developed during this three week period over the last 100 years. There clearly is no pattern. Hurricanes can and do develop just about anywhere during the peak of the season.

So far this hurricane season, we've had three named storms in the Atlantic basin, which also includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Of these, Hurricane Bill developed into a major hurricane last week before dissipating over the cool water in the north Atlantic early Monday morning.

Click here for a list of the various hurricane season outlooks issued this year.

When storms develop, track the tropics online using our new Interactive Hurricane Tracking Map. You can display the latest computer models, wave and water data from ocean buoys, monitor reconnaissance data from the Hurricane Hunters and more!

Weak front could produce a few strong storms

The  weak "August Cool Front" we initially thought might bring us a break from the heat and humidity is still draped across southeast Texas. Moisture collecting along the front will help produce a few afternoon showers again Tuesday. And like we've seen over the past few days, if it does rain in your neighborhood it will likely be heavy.

You can see on the detailed weather map to the left that the air is slightly cooler on the east side of the front. The smaller numbers below the temperatures are the dew points, an indication of how much moisture is in the air. It's also not nearly as humid on the east side of the front.

This stalled front will wash out by the middle of the week, but on Friday and Saturday another front slides into Texas. While it's still uncertain whether or not this next front will move completely through, it will get close enough to produce more heavy showers.

The summer that won't end

Alongside my yard I have two huge Crepe Myrtle trees. They’re about 25 feet tall and the trunks are about two feet wide. These trees must be 50 years old. So you can imagine how many little white flowers they produce.  When the wind blows it looks like it’s snowing—quite a refreshing sight on a hot summer day.

Temperatures have hit 100° or higher seventeen times this summer and there have been almost as many nights when the low temperature never dropped below 80°. Since June 1, the average temperature (which combines the lows and highs together) has been 86.6°. That's hotter than 1980, the hottest summer on record.

And if you think it's been hot here, in College Station the high temperature has topped 100° or higher 48 times this summer.

The "August Cool Front" we hoped would make it into Houston stalled out north of us. We won't be feeling the lower humidity and slightly cooler mornings after all.

It is kind of early for cool fronts.  But that will change in about a month. The Crepe Myrtle trees will stop “snowing”  little flowers and the temperatures will start to cool off.

Fall begins September 22.

Inside the eye of Hurricane Bill

NASA's high powered satellites captured the full power of Hurricane Bill while it was a category four hurricane over the western Atlantic.  This close-up shot of the eye of the storm was taken at 9:55 AM Thursday morning.

You can see ragged edge of the eye-wall, and the fair weather clouds inside the eye, which was about 30 miles wide. The maximum winds in the eye-wall were estimated at 135 mph. 

The rest of the photo is shown below. Although it was a powerful storm, strong wind shear blowing in from the southwest was starting to affect the internal structure; the shape was not as symmetrical as it was a few days earlier.

Hurricane Bill is still expected to generate some large waves and dangerous rip currents along the eastern seaboard, but that will be the extent of the effects felt within the U.S. The storm could clip Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, although it will be a weaker hurricane because of wind shear and colder water temperatures.

You can track the storm online using our new Interactive Hurricane Tracking map.

Elsewhere in the tropics, a small tropical wave has developed in the far eastern Atlantic. There is a low chance of this developing into a tropical cyclone the next few days.

Image courtesy NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

It's not a Cold Front. It's an August Cool Front.

Friday morning update: New data shows the push of "cooler" air and lower humidity will be a little more east of us than previously forecast. That means we'll have to adjust the forecast back up a little and perhaps even add a slight chance of rain to the weekend forecast.

Follow "abc13weather" on Twitter for real-time weather updates.

Previous discussion follows:

You won't find that term in any meteorology book; we made it up. 

An "August Cool Front" has cooler air behind it, not cold.  And since this is August, it's even less cool than you might normally expect.

Be definition, cold fronts mark the front edge of an airmass that is cooler than the air in front of it.  It could be 2° degrees cooler or 30° cooler, it's still technically a "cold front."  The air behind this cold front is actually about 20° cooler, but the real cool air is pushing more east than it is south.

Perhaps we should call it a "Less Humid Front." Dew points will drop significantly behind the front and that will help the morning lows dip back into the low 70s, which is actually closer to where temperatures should be this time of year.

It will still be warm during the afternoon hours, just not as  muggy.  Call it a "dry heat."  We didn't make that one up.