Airborne Observation of Vertically-Sheared Hurricane Danny (2015)

Observations from the NOAA P-3 and G-IV aircraft were collected in Hurricane Danny (2015) during a period of increasing vertical wind shear to examine how the hurricane-shear interaction contributes to storm structure and intensity change. During the first mission, Danny was a 100-kt major hurricane in less than 10 kts of southwesterly deep-layer shear. By the next mission 24 h later, Danny weakened to 70 kts as the shear increased to nearly 20 kts. Wind, temperature, moisture and reflectivity from Doppler radar, in situ measurement, and dropsondes are synthesized using the Spline Analysis at Mesoscale Utilizing Radar and Aircraft Instrumentation (SAMURAI) variational technique. These data and analyses are used to assess the viability of the various pathways to shear-induced weakening described in the recent literature.