HURRICANE SEASON OF 1998 IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC

«NICOLE»

November 24^th-December 1^st

It developed in an area of low pressures in the first hours of the morning of the 24^th some 1,220 km east of La Palma, Canary Islands.

As this system developed, it remained located in the central portion of an upper cyclone, where the vertical shear was relatively small. With a course to the West-southwest and later to the West that characterized it in the first stages of its existence, the storm reached a wind intensity of 110 km/h and a minimum pressure of 1005 hPa in the afternoon of the 24^th. These values remained until the morning of the next day when they started weakening. In the early hours of the 26^th it was classified as a tropical depression and only as an area of low pressure in the morning that day at about 2,000 km West-southwest of the Canary Islands.

The weakening of Nicole was due to its motion over a highly sheared environment caused by strong jet streams from the West in the upper troposphere.

Nicole managed to survive this intense shear and in the morning of the 27^th was catalogued again as a tropical depression and started moving then to the West-northwest. In the afternoon that day it reached the rank of tropical storm. Nicole started its recurve on the 28^th and the next day it headed Northeast. In the evening of the 29^th it reached strength of hurricane and in the evening of the 30^th its winds rose up to 140 km/h with a central pressure of 979 hPa. Since the early hours of December the 1^st it turned to the North-northwest and gained speed entering into each time cooler waters (approximately 20°C) and into a baroclinic zone. These conditions caused it to loose its tropical characteristics in the morning of that day.

Hurricane Nicole. November 30, 1998 (02:45 UTC)

Acknowledgments