From the archive
Ex-Hurricane "Charley" West of Europe
by: J. Kerkmann (EUMETSAT)
September is normally the month with the highest frequency of hurricanes on the
Atlantic, and 1992 did not violate this rule. After devastating "Andrew", a small and
ferocious Cape Verde hurricane that brought unprecedented economic devastation
along a path through the northwestern Bahamas, the southern Florida peninsula, and
south-central Louisiana, and "Bonnie", "Charley" was first recognised on
METEOSAT imagery about 1000 km south of the Azores on 20 September 1992. The
system, at that time a mid- to upper-level cyclonic circulation, became a tropical
depression on 21 September 1000 km southwest of the Azores with an initial
movement toward the northwest. It took two more days before an eye appeared on the
satellite pictures, and Charley became a hurricane (insert link to info below). Analysis
of satellite imagery suggests that the maximum sustained winds were 95 knots (175
km/h) and minimum central pressure was 965 hPa near 18 UTC on 24 September.
On 26 September, Charley began moving toward the east-northeast with increasing
speed over progressively cooler water. On 27 September Charley was downgraded to
a tropical storm. Successively, it passed over the island of Terceira (Azores) where
winds of 46 knots (85 km/h) and gusts up to 71 knots (131 km/h) were reported.
Finally, at 18 UTC on 27 September, Charley became an extratropical cyclone. The
acceleration towards the northeast continued, until the system was "absorbed" by a
larger extratropical low centered to the northwest of the British Isles. The track of
Charley is shown on the figure below.
The moment of the "absorption" of Ex-Charley by the large extratropical cyclone is
shown on the above visible image. Compared to the large cyclone southwest of
Iceland, Ex-Charley appears rather small but with a well-defined spiral structure
inserted into the frontal system of the larger cyclone. Convection in the centre of ExCharley is still quite strong shown by the shadow of the overshooting tops on the
surrounding clouds.