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Keith234
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Loc: 40.7N/73.3W Long Island
Temperature of Cloud Tops
      #20649 - Sun Aug 22 2004 02:23 PM

I have read on the Hurricane Hunter's site that Supertyphoon Rita had the highest temp. at (somewhere in the mid 80's) at a very high altitude. What I found interesting was that I knew cloud tops temps were suppose to decrease with altitude and the warming of cloud tops was a sign of weakening but this was a supertyphoon, so was this a freak thing or does it usually happen with very strong storms? So if anyone could anwser this question, it would be great.

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ClarkModerator
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Re: Temperature of Cloud Tops [Re: Keith234]
      #20652 - Sun Aug 22 2004 02:50 PM

They were likely talking about in the eye of the storm, where temperatures should be warm (lacking clouds in the strongest of storms). There is strong sinking motion within the eye of the storm, leading to compressional heating. Thus, sometimes at even very high altitudes, you can still get very warm temperatures with very strong storms.

As a complete aside, it's a shame they don't do recon on WPac storms anymore -- we'd be getting some very interesting data, I'm sure. But alas, they stopped doing them a long time ago.

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