Hurricane Earl is buffeting the outer banks of North Carolina today with strong winds, big surf and heavy rain. The storm weakened from a category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 135 mph down to a category two overnight as it skirted the coastline of North Carolina. For the latest on Earl, check out the National Hurricane Center.
Earl brings back memories of my days in eastern North Carolina. I was the morning meteorologist at WCTI in New Bern. It was there that I had my first experience forecasting hurricanes. I'll never forget hurricane Hugo and the destruction it left behind in the Carolinas back in 1989.
Hugo made landfall as a category 4 storm near Charleston, South Carolina. 49 people were killed and it left behind nearly $7 billion in damage. At the time, it was the costliest hurricane to hit the United States. The storm surge reached to 20 feet as it made landfall. It maintained tropical storm strength all the way inland into Charlotte, North Carolina.
Before Hugo... After Hugo....
www.facebook.com/TimMcGillWeatherGuy
http://twitter.com/WGNWeatherGuy
Tim:
speaking of hurricanes... last night I noticed that the eye barometric pressure for Earl was around 955 mB. That got me to thinking, it seemed to me that a pretty aggressive storm such as Katrina had an eye pressure down around 900 mB. I was wondering, what is the lowest eye barometric pressure ever recorded in a hurricane? Could you give that to me in both mB and inches of mercury?
Curiously,
Mike Kemp, Naperville, IL