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Hurricane Lee passes west of Bermuda

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, from 1700-2225 UTC on 14 September [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed Category 1 Hurricane Lee as it moved northward between Buoy 41048 and Bermuda (station identifier TXKF) on 14 September 2023. As shown in the plot below, the highest wind gust at Buoy 41048 was 41.0 m/s (79.7 knots, or 97.7 mph) at 2010 UTC (data transmission from the buoy ceased after 2310 UTC). The strong winds from Lee produced wave heights to 32 ft — and produced upwelling that cooled the water temperature several degrees.

Plot of wind speed (blue), wind gust (red) and air pressure (green) at Buoy 41048

In 1-minute GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (below), the coldest cloud tops exhibited infrared brightness temperatures around -80ºC (brighter shades of white embedded within darker black regions).

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images, from 1700 UTC on 14 September to 0300 UTC on 15 September [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Analyses of deep-layer wind shear from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site (below) showed that Lee was moving into an environment of increasingly unfavorable shear as it gained latitude — which was acting to suppress the development of deep convection and the maintenance of a well-defined eye.

Storm-centered GOES-16 Water Vapor images at 3-hour intervals, with analyses of deep-layer wind shear

Categories: GOES-16, Marine weather, Satellite winds, Tropical cyclones