On the Decay of Tropical Cyclone Winds after Landfall in the New England Area

Abstract

A version of the Kaplan and DeMaria empirical model for predicting the decay of tropical cyclone 1-min maximum sustained surface winds after landfall is developed for the New England region. The original model was developed from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) best-track wind estimates for storms that made landfall in the United States south of 37°N from 1967 to 1993. In this note, a similar model is developed for U.S. storms north of 37°N, which primarily made landfall in New York or Rhode Island and then moved across New England. Because of the less frequent occurrence of New England tropical cyclones, it was necessary to include cases back to 1938 to obtain a reasonable sample size. In addition, because of the faster translational speed and the fairly rapid extratropical transition of the higher-latitude cases, it was necessary to estimate the wind speeds at 2-h intervals after landfall, rather than every 6 h, as in the NHC best track. For the model development, the estimates of the maximum sustained surface winds of nine landfalling storms (seven hurricanes and two tropical storms) at 2-h intervals were determined by an analysis of all available surface data. The wind observations were adjusted to account for variations in anemometer heights, averaging times, and exposures. Results show that the winds in the northern model decayed more (less) rapidly than those of the southern model, when the winds just after landfall are greater (less) than 33 knots. It is hypothesized that this faster rate of decay is due to the higher terrain near the coast for the northern sample and to the more hostile environmental conditions (e.g., higher vertical wind shear). The slower decay rate when the winds fall below 33 knots in the northern model might be due to the availability of a baroclinic energy source as the storms undergo extratropical transition.