Hurricane Noel QuikSCAT winds
Hurricane Noel remained a minimal Category 1 hurricane early in the day on 02 November 2007, although the satellite presentation was starting to deteriorate (GOES-12 IR animation) as the storm began the transition to an extratropical system. SeaWinds scatterometer data from the QuikSCAT satellite around 10:48 UTC (above, and below) did show two wind retrievals of 74 knots just to the northwest of the storm center. However, those two 74 knot wind speed points had the “Rain Flag” active (all the wind barbs with circles on the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones TCTrak display have the Rain Flag active), meaning that the presence of rainfall may have contaminated the data at those points — energy backscattered from large rain drops can constitute a significant (but unknown) portion of the measured echo energy.
