Hermine!

Tropical Storm Hermine hit south Texas with a lot more punch than a typical 65mph tropical storm! Brownsville, TX (A good bit north of Hermine's landfall) saw sustained winds of 45mph and gusts to 69mph... The highest official gust was clocked at 73mph in Harlingen, TX... Another great example of a strengthening tropical cyclone at landfall producing/verifying higher wind speeds at the surface! Hermine was also another example of a weak tropical cyclone intensifying before landfall, and being able to keep its strength for some time over land!

TS Hermine made landfall last night in NE Mexico at 8:40pm CDT and was able to maintain tropical storm strengthen until the 7pm CDT tonight (5 miles SW of Brady, TX)... That is almost 24 hours over land, which is almost unheard of! Think about that, it took 22 1/2 hours for TS Hermine's winds to drop from 65pmh to 35mph! 30mph in almost 24 hours? Obviously, it's not impossible, but my friend Rob Hart said it best, TS Hermine would make a great research project! While I love weather history, I'm not quite the tropical weather historian some are, so if this has happened before, please let me know! Personally, over the next few days, I'm going to examine TS Hermine in much more detail...

It just goes to show that the weather doesn't always work the way you would think it would... Tropical cyclones are supposed to weaken fairly rapidly over land right? Well, not in Hermine's case... When Hurricane Katrina made its first landfall in south Florida, it didn't weaken much at all (1omph) as she moved across the Everglades... However, that makes some sense to me considering all the water still available in the Everglades... This is something that I know I'm going to research, and like Rob said, would make a great research project for anyone interested! Thesis anyone???

In my opinion, even though TS Hermine was over land, it did have a few things going for it!

1) It was strengthening before landfall, which allowed development to continue over land for some time...

2) The upper air pattern was very favorable, even over the heart of Texas, which also helped sustain Hermine....

3) The angle Hermine came into land, allowed a nice steady flow of warm/moist air to continue out of the Gulf of Mexico into the NE Quad, many hours after landfall...

4) With as warm as the Gulf/tropics have been, the moisture content over land has been much higher than most years... Maybe I'm wrong about that, but this summer sure has seemed like one of the more humid/moist summers I've ever seen in Mississippi... You can really see that overall this summer with how warm the lows at night have been! I may be stretching some here since a strong cold front for early September did just move through the south, but it was just a thought?