As Tropical Storm Isaac passed across the Caribbean Sea south of Hispaniola (outlined by black lines along the top of the images) NOAA P-3 missions collected airborne Doppler radar data to use in initializing and evaluating model guidance. Included here you see images of the horizontal winds within the inner core of Tropical Storm Isaac sampled from the tail Doppler radar on the P-3 early on 24 August 2012. These images are at three altitudes, 1 km, 3 km, and 6 km, using a composite of winds from two legs oriented northeast-southwest and southeast-northwest. Also plotted on the 1-km altitude analysis are the locations of dropsondes deployed (plotted using standard station symbols). As in the previous analysis Isaac’s circulation is still disorganized and very asymmetric with the stronger winds north and east of the circulation center. The circulation center is tilted from north to south with increasing altitude from 1-km altitude to 6-km altitude, but less than in the previous missions. At 1 km the circulation from the Doppler analysis is close to latitude 16.5 degrees N, and at 6 km it is closer to latitude 16 degrees N, or a tilt of only 50 km. However, the dropsondes suggest that there may still be multiple centers at 1 km altitude, with another center south of the one in the Doppler analysis. Also evident is the very weak and disorganized circulation at 3-km altitude.
All the Isaac radar composites at 0.5-km height resolution are available at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/isaac2012/radar.html.