The eye of the beholder

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

TIn AD7-148 Tom Callahan writes of " the eye of the storm, where the greatest
energy is located. This area is relatively small. As one moves away from the
eye, the energy level drops significantly. The periphery, by contrast, is just
a spring shower."

That is a Seattle hurricane. Carolina hurricanes are more like the dictionary
definition, (my desk dictionary, which shall remain nameless, having been the
object of scorn at least once) "an area like a hole in the center of a
tropical cyclone marked by only light winds or complete calm with no
precipitation". The OED says "Centre (see! Brits!) of revolution", giving as
an example "The dreadful calm within the whirl, to which sailors have given
the name of 'the eye of the storm'".

Mike in Mississippi, also AD7-148 writes of Gulf Coast hurricanes "we are
really talking about the eye of the storm (the center of circulation)...where
the winds are most severe"

So one might say that the eye is in the mind of the beholder. When Hurricane
Fran passed through Raleigh a couple of years ago we did have a "TDC" sort of
experience, a very tranquil period of just under an hour when I walked around
the quiet neighborhood after half our trees blew down one way and before the
other half blew down the other way. Hurricanes/cyclones/tornadoes and their
many variants in different scales, velocities and languages are rotational
devices which may have very high maximum speeds of winds but often quite
modest speeds of forward progressions of the whole shebang. If one is exactly
on path one has steadily increasing force and speed in one direction, zilch in
the exact center/centre, (which is not a pin-point, but may be several miles
in diameter), and then a mirror-image of the earlier speed and force but in
the opposite direction. If one is, say, a third of the way out from the path
of the cent there will be an increase, peak, and decrease in speed and force
with continuing directional shift but not reversal, and no point of complete
calm. 

As for "The somewhat famous...or infamous?...Jack Hagerty"'s question about
coming ashore, in Carolina-speak that is where and when the wind-speeds at the
shore hit nominal hurricane force on the very arbitrary scale which weather
folk use to differentiate tropical depressions, tropical storms, hurricanes,
and all-shit-broke-loose. 

As for Alfa content, my Milano got away with modest front damage from
branches, but Colin Verrilli's 164 got mangled by a tree. I hope he took
before-and-after pictures, the body-shop did wonders.

None of the above is intended to disagree with the professional knowledge of
the eminent Mississippi Mike, just to say that these terms may mean different
things on different coasts. Hood, bonnet, that sort of thing.

John H.
in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a twenty-year supply of cordwood. 

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