Wind Research Laboratory

It has been almost a week since Ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie drenched South East Queensland. In the wake of the record rainfall and flood event, some interesting observations have surfaced. Near the tail-end of the rainfall event, the eye of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie passed directly over Brisbane as seen in the Mt. Stapylton radar imagery provided by Dr. Joshua​ Soderholm at Fugro Roames (data from the Bureau of Meteorology). Also of note were impressive boundary layer streaks and turbulent structures meandering through the Doppler velocity field. The atmosphere never ceases to impress.

We have co-authored a Severe Tropical Cyclone Debbie Rapid Damage Assessment Report with our colleagues from the JCU Cyclone Testing Station and University of Florida. It is now live on the SWIRLnet webpage and can be accessed by clicking on the following weblink: http://bit.ly/TC_Debbie.

SWIRLNet - JCU Australia Our team will be deploying throughout the area for the current weather development in North Queensland. At this time we do not have a name of this potential Cyclone we will update with more information shortly.

Tower 1 has been deployed successfully at Ayr Showgrounds! Next stop will be Bowen...

WiRL PhD students Thomas Klötzke and Alessio Spassiani present their work at the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society and Meteorological Society of New Zealand Conference 2017 in Canberra, ACT.

Very astonishing weather patterns over and near the South-East US coast: Hurricane Matthew currently "hugs" the eastern coastline of Florida as a Category 4 storm and developed an outer eyewall which is clearly seen in the radar image provided by the National Weather Service. Even the models (Hurricane WRF in this case, provided by Tropical Tidbits) predicted the evolution of a second eyewall. On top of that, Hurricane Matthew is in close proximity to another Hurricane called Nicole (satellite image credits: NASA/NOAA GOES Project). One has to consider the possibility that these two hurricanes will interact with each other, which has been recognised as the Fujiwhara-Effect (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.49704720010/abstract). The effect describes two tropical cyclones orbiting each other while closing the distance to their low-pressure systems. Although the outlook is still a bit vague, it is a possible outcome.