What has happened to Cape Coral?

SW46TER · Senior Member Joined: Jul 11, 2005 Posts: 1197

Chris, sorry I didn't see this before. The reason the winds were so strong on the backside were because you had polar high pressure diving in right behind the eye of Wilma. This time of year behind storms in FLA you almost always have tropical high pressure nosing into Florida. This is lower pressure and warmer air in nature as compared to Continental Polar (CP) high pressure which is colder and much higher pressure. What occured was that the pressure gradient behind the storm was much greater than it was in front. The greater the difference in pressure over a short distance causes the strongest winds. In addition, temps aloft in the 30's invaded the backside of Wilmas precip shield and not only intensified the rainbands, but also aided in the downward momentum of the intense windfield located about 10,000 ft. off the ground. Although your station recorded a peak gust of 69 mph, I am confident that parts of the Cape received gusts in the 80-100mph range in the 6:30-8:30 am time period

chris

That makes sense to me Jeff. You are correct about the wind gust around the Cape. I can't remember who told me or where I got the information but at either Cape Elementary or the Centrum (City Hall) there was a gust reported at 80 mph. I can definitely believe that the information is accurate because it was just non-stop for about 2 hours. What was really awesome, the crane in Cape Harbour, which im glad didn't tip, was changing direction like a weather vane. The crane operators must purposely disengage the unit so that it doesnt feel all the force from the wind on one side. I've got some pretty cool video of it that I plan on posting in the future. Smile

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Chris
Site Administrator
Cape Coral and Southwest Florida Online Weather

Stratosailor · Junior Member Joined: Oct 19, 2005 Posts: 24

It is a common procedure in Europe to disengage the "brake" on a crane, if high wind / gusts are expected, and the only measure to prevent mast-contortion and breaking of a crane in such conditions, unfortunately here it doesn't seem to be so common, as seen from damage pictures from Ft. Lauderdale...

paulmcartney · New Member Joined: Oct 24, 2005 Posts: 2

In the meantime we got some more details to what has happened to our house - just very little damage. So again many thanks to all of you for keeping us updated. We'll be arriving on Dec 8th for some six weeks, and we'll be having quite a few beers at the Tikka Hut. Should anyone pop in, look out for us, and we'll buy you a drink.