On 16 August, 1977, a tropical wave moved off the coast of Africa. It wasn’t until nearly two weeks later that the wave developed enough convection and a surface circulation, and was designated a tropical depression in the middle of the Gulf of America. The system slowly moved west-southwestward, but rapidly intensifying into a category-5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph just two days later. Anita made landfall at Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas, on the Mexican Gulf coast as a category-5 hurricane. Though the region of greatest impact was sparsely populated, 11 deaths were reported, and 25,000 were left homeless by the hurricane.
Anita marked a number of firsts for NOAA. NOAA had recently acquired two new Lockheed WP-3D aircraft for hurricane research, and they were both deployed into the storm, marking the first hurricane flights for these planes. In addition, ground-based radar located in Brownsville, TX, noted a double eyewall feature that Hugh Willoughby, later director of HRD, instrumental in his development of the theory of concentric eyewalls and eyewall replacement cycles.
Scientists at what eventually became HRD studied the data from these early flights for many years resulting in 15 published papers in the peer-reviewed literature:
Jorgensen, D. P., and P. T. Willis, 1982: A Z-R relationship for Hurricanes. J. Appl. Meteor., 356-366
Jorgensen, D. P., 1984: Mesoscale and convective-scale characteristics of mature hurricanes. Part I: General observations by research aircraft. J. Atmos. Sci., 41, 1268-1285.
Jorgensen, D. P., E. J. Zipser, and M. A. LeMone, 1985: Vertical motions in intense hurricanes. J. Atmos. Sci., 42, 839-856.
Lewis, B. M., and H. F. Hawkins, 1982: Polygonal eye walls and rainbands in hurricanes. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 63, 1294-1300.
Marks, F. D. Jr., D. Atlas and P. T. Willis, 1993: Probability-matched reflectivity-rainfall relations for a hurricane from aircraft observations. J. Appl. Meteor., 32, 1134-1141.
Merceret, F. J., 1979: The scales of variation of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation in hurricanes. Mon. Wea. Rev., 107, 91-95.
Powell, M. D., 1980: Evaluations of diagnostic marine boundary-layer models applied to hurricanes. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 757-766.
Willoughby, H. E., 1979: Excitation of spiral bands in hurricanes by interaction between the symmetric mean vortex and a shearing environmental steering current. J. Atmos. Sci., 36, 1226-1235.
Willoughby, H. E., J. A. Clos, and J. G. Shoreibah, 1982: Concentric eye walls, secondary wind maxima, and the evolution of the hurricane vortex. J. Atmos. Sci., 39, 395-411.
Willoughby, H. E., and M. B. Chelmow, 1982: Objective determination of hurricane tracks from aircraft observations. Mon. Wea. Rev., 110, 1298-1305.
Willoughby, H. E., D. P. Jorgensen, R. A. Black, and S. L. Rosenthal, 1985: Project STORMFURY: A scientific chronicle 1962-1983. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 66, 50-514.
Willoughby, H. E., 1990: Temporal changes of the primary circulation in tropical cyclones. J. Atmos. Sci., 47, 242-264.
Willoughby, H. E., and M. E. Rahn, 2004: Parametric representation of the primary hurricane vortex. Part I: Observations and evaluation of the Holland (1980) model. Mon. Wea. Rev., 132, 3033-3048.
Willoughby, H. E., R. W. R. Darling, and M. E. Rahn, 2006: Parametric representation of the primary hurricane vortex. Part II: A new family of sectionally continuous profiles. Mon. Wea. Rev., 134, 1102-1120.