Hurricane Michael Upgraded To Rare Category 5 Storm At Landfall

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It turns out Hurricane Michael, which devastated parts of the Florida Panhandle and surrounding areas last October 10, was even stronger than first thought.

It was a rare landfalling Category 5 hurricane, the strongest you can get. It had previously been regarded as a higher end Category 4, but a re-analysis has determined the extremely powerful hurricane was even a little worse than everybody assumed.

According to a statement Friday from NOAA's National Hurricane Center:

"Michael is the first hurricane to make landfall in the United States as a Category 5 since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and only the fourth on record. The others are the Labor Day Hurricane in 1935 and Hurricane Camille in 1969. Michael is also the strongest hurricane landfall on record in the Florida Panhandle and only the second known Category 5 landfall on the northern Gulf Coast."

Hurricane Michael was originally thought to have made landfall with top sustained winds of 155 mph, which is a high end Category 4. But it probably had sustained winds 5 mph higher, at 160 mph.

As a practical matter, the 5 mph difference has little real-life effect. The storm would have been pretty much as destructive if winds were "only" 155 mph instead of 160 mph. The top sustained winds of 160 mph probably occurred in a very small area around Mexico Beach, and Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida.

But the new designation helps demonstrate how extreme Michael was. The upgrade in the storm's intensity came after the National Hurricane Center reviewed wind measurements from aircraft, reports of surface wind measurements air presure, satellite intensity estimates and Doppler radar data. This includs a lot of data and analysis that was not immediately available at the moment Michael roared ashore, says NOAA.

Most hurricanes weaken as they approach a coastline, because friction with land usually interferes with the storm's air flow. Hurricane Michael kept strengthening right up to the moment of landfall. There's no telling how strong it would have gotten had it gone through more warm ocean water before reaching shore.

Only a few recorded hurricanes, like Hurricane Charley in southwestern Florida in 2004, strenghten rapidly until landfall. This type of hurricane is obviously extremely dangerous. People in the hurricane zone might have been expecting a weaker hurricane, only to confront a monster like Michael.

With this in mind, Hurricane Michael is sure to be studied extenstively going forward. Meteorologists will want to understand why some hurricanes strengthen dramatically as they approach the coast, like Michael did. Better forecasting in such situations will surely save lives.

I also think scientists will want to better understand whether climate change makes it more likely that hurricanes could pull a Michael and get much more dangerous as they come ashore.

Meanwhile, the people who suffered the effects of Hurricane Michael are probably not caring whether the storm had 155 or 160 mph winds. It'll take years to clean up the mess. CBS News said some people were still living in tents six months after the storm.

Hurricane Michael will also present dangers for years. About 350,000 acres of northwest Florida pine forests were completely destroyed by the hurricane. Another 4.6 million acres are damaged.  All that fallen timber presents a big wildfire danger, reports Scientific American.

Already, there has been on pretty good sized fire near Panama City, and there will probably be more.
All this is more proof that hurricanes don't really end when the winds die down. In some ways, they continue on for years.