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Hurricane Melissa

I’ve been looking back at other high end cat5 hurricane damage, Haiyan, Irma, Dorian, Beryl (not a cat5, but the damage in union island is high end cat5 level), and Goni. The thing you’ll notice with Melissa is that wooden structures simply ceased to exist. As of now, I’ve not seen a single wood construction home still standing where the worst of the winds hit.

And apart from Haiyan and Goni, you don’t see this with the other high end cat5s. There were numerous wood construction homes functionally destroyed but still standing with Dorian, Irma, and Beryl in Union island.

Obviously, the level of debarking from Haiyan, Goni, and now Melissa are also noticeably more severe than the aforementioned storms.

I strongly think a 6th category to the SSHWS is wholly unnecessary and even detrimental, but if it where to be added, then visible distinction of the damage separating from “high end cat5s and cat6s” would be the phenomenon of no wooden structures standing and at least 20% of trees in the area being debarked. Which is what happened with Haiyan, Goni, and Melissa.

It makes me dreadful, thinking what would dade county (Andrew), or bay county (Michael), would look like had a storm like Melissa made landfall there instead. Based on what happened to large well built wooden structures and even reinforced concrete/ monolith structures, Im assuming the aforementioned areas (which have even poorer construction standards, especially in 1992) hit by the eyewall would be reduced to nothing but debris and slabs, terrifying thought.
 
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Photos from Josh showing debarking in various locations impacted by Melissa’s inner eyewall. The last one is particularly incredible, and shows a large tree that has been almost completely debarked.
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jiharris0220 said:
What this thing did to monolith type construction never ceases to astonish, the concrete/stone walls seem to be over a foot thick, didn’t matter.
Debarking and complete denudation of the foliage behind to.
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What church is this?
 
Grand Poo Bah said:
Andrew had extremely violent damage for a hurricane, but it was EF2 to EF3 level with the way tornadoes are rated today. I think a safe bet for the type of damage we can expect with these winds would be comparing current measured winds to the original Fujita scale which was arguably more accurate and way less political.

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This is to say, the damage we're about to whitness on a huge swath of this little island is going to be shocking and historic. Especially in the mountains.
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Turns out this prediction ended up being pretty accurate. Looks like some areas had traditional high-end F4 damage, which isn't surprising considering the hurricane easily could've had 240-250 mph wind gusts. Seems safe to say what hurricanes lack in instantaneous and explosive winds they easily make up for with the sustained nature of their winds.

Kinda crazy how well the Fujita scale translated in this instance. Was telling another user it feels like this community is starting to get a pretty good grasp on the wind speed/damage relationship.
 
jiharris0220 said:
I’ve been looking back at other high end cat5 hurricane damage, Haiyan, Irma, Dorian, Beryl (not a cat5, but the damage in union island is high end cat5 level), and Goni. The thing you’ll notice with Melissa is that wooden structures simply ceased to exist. As of now, I’ve not seen a single wood construction home still standing where the worst of the winds hit.

And apart from Haiyan and Goni, you don’t see this with the other high end cat5s. There were numerous wood construction homes functionally destroyed but still standing with Dorian, Irma, and Beryl in Union island.

Obviously, the level of debarking from Haiyan, Goni, and now Melissa are also noticeably more severe than the aforementioned storms.

I strongly think a 6th category to the SSHWS is wholly unnecessary and even detrimental, but if it where to be added, then visible distinction of the damage separating from “high end cat5s and cat6s” would be the phenomenon of no wooden structures standing and at least 20% of trees in the area being debarked. Which is what happened with Haiyan, Goni, and Melissa.

It makes me dreadful, thinking what would dade county (Andrew), or bay county (Michael), would look like had a storm like Melissa made landfall there instead. Based on what happened to large well built wooden structures and even reinforced concrete/ monolith structures, Im assuming the aforementioned areas (which have even poorer construction standards, especially in 1992) hit by the eyewall would be reduced to nothing but debris and slabs, terrifying thought.
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Camilel from 1969, (killed name ik) had winds of 175 at landfall the main thing its known for was a "hurricane" part of some sort in a large condo like place, everyone but 1 died as survivor was thrown in a nearby tree, the whole structure was swept clean with nothing at the slab, there are images of this aswell as a very low quality sat image of it at landfall and had a pinhole like appearance
 
Cyclonic Paracosm said:
Camilel from 1969, (killed name ik) had winds of 175 at landfall the main thing its known for was a "hurricane" part of some sort in a large condo like place, everyone but 1 died as survivor was thrown in a nearby tree, the whole structure was swept clean with nothing at the slab, there are images of this aswell as a very low quality sat image of it at landfall and had a pinhole like appearance
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That was purely from storm surge, and my very, very unpopular opinion is that Camille did not contain cat5 winds at landfall.

The DOD in Henderson Point, which got the inner most east eyewall, where the RMW was located, definitely isn’t cat5 level.

The amount of vegetation still standing/still having foliage and lack of roof damage or even any substantial structural damage to poorly built homes (wind damage only) is too much for me to ignore.
KZC relationship using minimum pressure and size supports 150knots, which what the NHC used as the bases of its downgrade from its old 170knot estimate.

But looking at the wind damage, and radar imagery, it’s clear Camille did not have enough time to fully recover from its ERC, while its central pressure was falling, down to 900mb at landfall, the winds likely didn’t have enough time to ramp up back to its initial peak. Had Camille had another 6 or even 3 hours, the photos of wind damage would’ve likely correlated far better with it’s designated cat5 intensity.

But based off of the photos, and I’ve seen every one of them over the past 15 years, I’ve yet to see one showing wind damage worse than Katrina.
 
I recall reading about Camille not being nearly as intense as it was made out to be at landfall due to the very reason of wind damage being somewhat underwhelming from the storm, I think it was from ExtremePlanet (it is). The guy got absolutely lambasted in his comment section for it despite the imagery being very supportive of his points. I found it quite funny that people got so defensive over it. Here's the link if anyone wants to give it a read, it's a lot of "I lived through this storm and I know it was a cat 5!"
extremeplanet.wordpress.com

Hurricane Camille Was Not a Category 5 at Landfall

*Please note that I only use peer-reviewed sources to draw my conclusions on Hurricane Camille’s intensity at landfall. □ The internet has prompted the rapid dissemination of information abo…
extremeplanet.wordpress.com extremeplanet.wordpress.com
 
slenker said:
I recall reading about Camille not being nearly as intense as it was made out to be at landfall due to the very reason of wind damage being somewhat underwhelming from the storm, I think it was from ExtremePlanet? The guy got absolutely lambasted in his comment section for it despite the imagery being very supportive of his points. I found it quite funny that people got so defensive over it. Here's the link if anyone wants to give it a read, it's a lot of "I lived through this storm and I know it was a cat 5!"
extremeplanet.wordpress.com

Hurricane Camille Was Not a Category 5 at Landfall

*Please note that I only use peer-reviewed sources to draw my conclusions on Hurricane Camille’s intensity at landfall. □ The internet has prompted the rapid dissemination of information abo…
extremeplanet.wordpress.com extremeplanet.wordpress.com
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Yea, this one is a classic, the guy got utterly dragged for this even though he’s most likely correct in his assertion.

The amount of people spouting out claiming they recorded wind speeds far exceeding 200mph and that he’s “disrespecting the people who flew into this storm” is hilarious.
 
In fairness, Extreme Planet did post more than his fair share of rather outlandish and scientifically questionable statements that probably did deserve ridicule. I don't think that was one of them. Hurricane Camille's wind damage was nowhere near some of the higher end wind damage we've seen from TCs elsewhere (Melissa, Haiyan, Dorian, Andrew, Michael, Irma, etc).
 
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