As Tropical Storm Tomas reorganized south of Hispaniola a NOAA P-3 mission collected airborne Doppler radar data to use in improving our understanding of tropical cyclone intensification, as well as for initializing and evaluating model guidance. Included here you will see images of the horizontal winds within about 150 km of the center of the disturbance sampled from the tail Doppler radar on the P-3 late on 3 November 2010. These images are at three altitudes, 1 km, 3 km, and 6 km, using a composite of winds from three legs oriented north-south, east-west, and west-east. Wind, temperature and relative humidity from GPS dropsondes dropped from the P-3 are also visible at 1 and 3 km altitudes. There is a relatively broad vortex evident at 1 km altitude that slopes toward the east-northeast with increasing altitude and becomes more compact and better defined at 6 km altitude, suggesting that the circulation is embedded in westerly vertical shear of the horizontal wind. The circulation at 1 and 3 km altitude appears to be closer to the southwest edge of the precipitation region and very asymmetric with the strongest winds to the north and east of the center. At 6 km altitude the circulation appears more symmetric about the center.
Published on: November 4, 2010