As Earl continues to get better organized NOAA P-3 missions continue to collect airborne Doppler radar data to use in initializing and evaluating model guidance. Included here you will see images of the horizontal winds within the inner core of T.S. Earl sampled from the tail Doppler radar on the P-3 on 29 August 2010. These images are at three altitudes, 1km, 5km, and 10km, using a composite of winds from all four legs oriented south-north, west-east, northeast-southwest, and southeast-norhtwest. Note the strongest winds on the northeast side of the storm. Compared to the analyses in the first P-3 mission the tilt in the center of the circulation from 1 km to 10 km altitude is much reduced, suggesting that Earl is encountering a reduction in the vertical shear of the horizontal wind over the vortex. What vortex tilt is evident is restricted to between 5 and 10 km altitude.
Published on: August 30, 2010