Meteorological history of Hurricane Ivan

Meteorological history of Hurricane Ivan

Hurricane Ivan developed from a tropical wave that moved off the coast of Africa on August 31. The cyclone gradually intensified until September 5, when it underwent rapid deepening and reached Category 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Ivan quickly weakened due to dry air, but it gradually reorganized, passing just south of Grenada as a major hurricane on September 7. Ivan gradually weakened before making landfall just west of Gulf Shores, Alabama on September 16 with winds of 120 mph. Ivan is the second most powerful hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Ike in October 2005.

About Meteorological history of Hurricane Ivan in brief

Summary Meteorological history of Hurricane IvanHurricane Ivan developed from a tropical wave that moved off the coast of Africa on August 31. The cyclone gradually intensified until September 5, when it underwent rapid deepening and reached Category 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Ivan quickly weakened due to dry air, but it gradually reorganized, passing just south of Grenada as a major hurricane on September 7. Ivan gradually weakened before making landfall just west of Gulf Shores, Alabama on September 16 with winds of 120 mph. Ivan weakened to tropical depression status as it turned to the northeast, and Ivan transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on September 18. The circulation of Ivan dissipated after crossing into Texas on September 25. Ivan broke several intensity records, and its duration was the tenth-longest on record for an Atlantic hurricane. Ivan was the longest tracked tropical cyclone of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season, lasted from late August through late September. It was considered nearly nine times the average rapid strengthening was considered for a typical hurricane, and was the southernmost major North Atlantic hurricane on record. Ivan ragged the northern portion of the northern Saharan Air Layer of the Hurricane Hunters Hurricane Hunters mission, raking the northern coast of the Lesser Antilles with strong winds of about 150mph. Shortly after Ivan became a hurricane, the outer ragged convection of the hurricane became ragged, ragged in its core with a well-defined eye, and it ragged to the north of the island of Tobago in the southern Antilles in the early morning hours of September 6.

The storm made landfall in Louisiana on September 22 as a tropical depression; the cyclone was forecast to gradually strengthen and within four days attain hurricane status; the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory predicted the depression to reach Category 4 status within three days. After reaching hurricane status, Ivan began to rapidly intensify with winds as the storm continued to intensify with an initial peak intensity of 135 mph ; early on September 6 it became a Category 4 hurricane. The hurricane attained Category 5 status in the central Caribbean Sea on September 8. It weakened to Category 3 status on September 9. Ivan became the southern most major hurricane in the history of the Atlantic Ocean on September 11. It dissipated on September 14. It is the only hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in Katrina in 2005; it was the first hurricane to do so in the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Rita in 2005. Ivan is the second most powerful hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Ike in October 2005. It became a tropical storm on September 13. It made landfall near Barbados in the northern Caribbean Sea with winds about 150 mph; it weakened to a tropical Depression on September 15. Ivan has been the most powerful Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Donna in 1980. It has also been the fourth most intense Atlantic hurricane in terms of sustained winds, with sustained winds of more than 100 mph.