SOMETCUBA Bulletin |
Volume 5 Number 1 |
January 1999 |
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September 8th-13th
It originated on the afternoon of the 13th in an extensive area of low pressures over the Northwest of the Gulf of Mexico and was classified 24 hours later as the sixth tropical storm of the season. The center of this system was extensive and poorly defined as the satellite images suggested several vortexes that turned around a great circulation pattern. Frances characterized by presenting a non-characteristic cloud pattern and an extensive cyclone circulation surrounded by a ring of winds with strength of tropical storm. It didn’t show a closed center, which isn’t common in tropical cyclones originating on the Atlantic basin. It rather reminded of the monzonic depressions of the western Pacific. It kept nearly stationary over the area until the 10th in the morning, when it headed North and later Northeast in the evening when it reached its maximum wind speed of 105 km/h and a central pressure of 991 hPa. In the early hours of the 11th it entered land through the coasts of Texas and then kept moving over this state degrading to tropical depression and dissipating later close to a well defined frontal line.
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