1. August- September NSF NOAA NRL NCAR UW UM RAINEX Workshop, Miami, 5-7 June 2006

2. NSF NOAA NRL NCAR UW UM 5-7 June Workshop

3. Motivation for RAINEX Understanding Rapid Intensity Changes

5. Cat 2 Cat 3 Cat 5 Cat 4 Day 12435 Famous Rapidly Intensifing Storm Hurricane Opal (1995) Pressure drop How do interactions of eyewalls & rainbands in the mature storm… … lead to intensity changes like these? rainband Intensity change problem:

6. RAINEX Flight Coordination ELDORA radar

7. KatrinaOpheliaRita Hurricanes investigated in RAINEX

8. Katrina

9. Katrina-28 August NRL convective upwind stratiform downwind Atlas et al. ‘ 63

10. Katrina-28 August ELDORA data Ref Vel Barnes et al. ‘ 83 NRL

11. Katrina-28 August Confirms “ Barnes ” structure

12. Rita

13. RAINEX Flights in Hurricane Rita

14. 0 ºC Rita- 21 September Intensifying to Cat. 5 EyeEyewall

15. Rita- 22 September-Concentric Eyewalls

16. Rita- 23 September-Sheared Shear Rogers et al. ‘ 03

17. Ophelia

18. A B Ophelia-9 September-Dry Midlevel Inflow B A Dry air Ref Vel

19. Data Availability

20. CONCLUSIONS RAINEX Notables: 3 hurricanes—Katrina, Ophelia, & Rita Innovative satellite-based flight control First use of ELDORA in a hurricane Data available via NCAR Field Catalog Katrina and Rita details: K & R’s spiral rainbands had Atlas & Barnes structures R sampled in 3 stages: rapid int., 2nd eyewall, shear Echo cores in eyewalls were linear & oblique Moat region had eye-like sounding Dry air entered in subsiding mesoscale midlevel inflows KatrinaOpheliaRita

21. How do rainbands form and evolve? How do rainbands contribute/influence the hurricane strength and evolution? Do the rainbands have any influence on the formation of secondary eyewall structure? If so, how? What is the influence/impact of secondary eyewall generation on the storm intensity? How do the concentric eyewall circulations influence overall storm intensity and structure? How does the convective "burst" affect initial storm growth? How do rainbands and eyewall organize in early stages of storm development? RAINEX Science Questions RAINEX Workshop, Miami, 5-7 June 2006