CNN is now calling her a Once in 500 YR storm.
Oh no--please, no.
however there are times when hurricanes can reach continue higher then normal hurricanes and become Annular.This allows a storm to carry on getting stronger beyond the point where hurricanes would normally begin a EWRC event.All long lasting category-5's are likely to be Annular.Hurricane Isabel also became annular and managed to keep its apperance as one for nearly 24hrs.It lasted about 42hrs as a category-5(the 3rd longest in record)before finally weakening as upper atmopsheric condtions weakened the system.The strongest ever atlantic hurricane in terms of windspeed was the 1935 labor day hurricane,the only hurricane that had 200mph winds suspected with pressure down to 892mbs.To reac hthat strength I highly suspected it also had perfect condtons over it with hot SST's from the Gulf stream nearby and it probably was also Annular considering its pure power and deepness.Annular hurricanes are often called doughnut storms due to a lack of feeder bands and a large circle shape,also the main feature of these storms is the large outflow coming from all quadrants of the storms,showing that each quadrant was similar in terms of strength,another sure sign that Isabel was a Annular storm,here is the image of Isabel when she was Annular,notice those individual vorticies in there as well:
http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/pub/goes/030913.isabel.gif
I've been watching the eye pretty closely and it doesn't look like it's going to close. It looks like it's going to close up, or gets ragged, and then flares back up to a nice tight circle. Is there anything to this annular thing that indicated there will be no ERC?
