Stormwinds™
WorldWinds, Inc. announces a new product to drive finite element surge and wave models: StormWinds™ – wind and pressure analyses for hurricanes or other historical storms. Wind direction, speed, and pressure are produced ona user defined grid; temporal and spatial resolutions are user specific.
At the core of StormWinds™ are multiple sources of objective analyses. The tropical cyclone analyses integrate surface observations at sea, on land, from satellites, and Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance, adjusting each source for observing height, exposure, and averaging time. The analyses also assign confidence levels based upon past performance of observation platforms and conditions. Objective analysis wind values are produced as 1-minute sustained vector components at a 10-m elevation. Although the objective analyses are available at 3-hour intervals, StormWinds™ produces interpolated results every 15 minutes. Additionally, StormWinds™ produces marine exposure wind analysis, allowing the user to apply land roughness-derived drag at unstructured mesh spatial resolutions as the storm approaches the coast.
StormWinds™ integrates mesoscale analyses from the National Weather Service and other sources, to extend the tropical cyclone analysis wind and pressure grids. These multiple sources are blended into a single 2000 km by2000 km domain covering the storm’s track throughout its life cycle; sources are weighted by location relative to the cyclone’s center and biases.