Polarimetric radar observations of the structure of Tropical Cyclone Ingrid

Tropical Cyclone Ingrid passed within 100 km of the Bureau of Meteorology 5 cm wavelength polarimetric radar near Darwin, Northern Australia in March 2005. Ingrid was a long lived storm that caused significant damage across northern Australia and reached category 5 intensity. The cyclone was decreasing in intensity from Category 4 to 3 at the time of its passage past the Darwin radars. This was at least partly because the eye was moving along the coast line, but did not actually make complete landfall at any time. This talk will present detailed polarimetric data of the eyewall and rainband structure. The rain pattern around the eye was very asymmetric with a maximum off shore as the eye passed along the northern coast of the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin. The convection on the north side of the eyewall at this time showed significant volumes of mixed phase precipitation, predominantly rain-hail mixtures being detected in the fuzzy logic based classification algorithm. There was also significant convection embedded within the principal rainband, which persisted over the Darwin area for a considerable period. Again, both the rain and microphysical structure will be discussed.