Rita wind speeds. Cat 2 or 3?

[Mike Johnson]

Just wondering if anyone has a found an accurate site for Rita wind speeds?
I have not seen any substained wind reports to support Cat. 3?

Thanks:

Mike

[Anonymous]

Lake Charles NWS had problems with several stations and that might be due to it being out.

[Sam Sagnella]

FCMP tower T0 in Port Arthur reported a peak 3.0 sec wind speed of 115.7mph at 0823UTC.

http://grove.ufl.edu/~fcmp/Rita/T0/

[Anonymous]

60sec and 10m

[Mike Johnson]

Looking at the initial data -- it is likely that Rita had no "sustained" winds to make it a Cat-3.

Mike

[Glen Romine]

The last analysis made by AOML just prior to landfall suggests Rita was right on the border between cat 2 and 3. Guess TPC went on the conservative side and stuck with the 3. Whether cat 3 conditions existed somewhere along the coast or not we'll never know - but it doesn't sound like too much of a stretch based on what observations there are. Expect it will go in the books as cat 3 at landfall.

ftp://ftp.aoml.noaa.gov/pub/hrd/hwind/200...30/col02deg.png (ftp://ftp.aoml.noaa.gov/pub/hrd/hwind/2005/al18.2005/0924/0730/col02deg.png)

Glen

[B Ozanne]

I expect it will go in the books as a cat 3 as well. Since you don't have observations from every area this storm hit it would be hard to prove that cat 3 winds didn't exist somewhere. Unless it was clearly no where near that strong. On the other hand, if you found evidence of a cat 4 then it would be upgraded (I'm not saying that evidence exists).