Snapshot of Andrew's Winds at Landfall

This is a color graphic of the sustained surface (10 m) wind speed distribution at landfall (5 am local time) described in the Weather and Forecasting articles. The strongest winds are contained in the eyewall (reds and purples), and the weakest winds are in the eye (the cross hairs show the storm center). Due to uncertainties in adjusting flight level reconnaissance wind measurements to the surface, accuracy of the winds in the eyewall is +/- 20%, elsewhere accuracy is on the order of 10%. The winds are representative of marine exposure over the water and open terrain (similar to an airport runway) over land. The discontinuity at the coastline is a few kilometers wide and represents the distance over which the air flow responds to a new underlying surface. Trees, houses, and other terrain features slow down the winds over land but strong gusts can still occur. To estimate the peak 3 second gust at any location, multiply the wind speeds in the graphic by 1.3. To convert from knots to miles per hour, multiply the wind speeds on the graphic by 1.15.
To find out more about our project to correct winds over land for terrain effects check out (www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/asos).

Below is a larger scale map of Florida taken from the diagram above.

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