The first Post-Storm Data Acquisition (PSDA) Team ever deployed by NOAA was sent to Guam soon after Super Typhoon Paka's southern outer eyewall crossed the island on 16 December 1997. The team members, Arthur Chiu (University of Hawaii), Greg Forbes (Penn State University), and Sam Houston, spent several days gathering detailed information on the tropical cyclone's impact, especially over the northern two-thirds of the island. The PSDA Team visited all available wind measurement sites and made aerial surveys and ground inspections of selected areas. Some of the most important data collected were the available surface wind observations on Guam. Unfortunately, many of the wind instruments failed prior to or during Paka's strongest winds due to power failures or damage to the equipment. Also, the loss of the Guam WSR-88D radar reflectivity and Doppler velocities during much of the storm was very unfortunate.
A description of the surface wind data that were acquired and the techniques used to quality control the data will be provided. The ground-based Velocity Track Display (GBVTD) technique used to construct wind vectors from the available WSR-88D Doppler velocities will be described. All available wind data were adjusted to a common height (10 meters) and averaging time (maximum 1-min sustained) for open terrain, over land exposure (the complex terrain on Guam made this particularly difficult). All of these adjusted data were analyzed to create surface wind fields that were used to construct wind swath products (e.g., peak winds and duration of typhoon force winds). Peak sustained winds of over 50 m s-1 occurred across most of the northern half of Guam and the duration of typhoon force or greater winds was at least 8 h over most of the same area. Examples of the wind fields and swath products will be shown and related to some of the observed damage due to Super Typhoon Paka's winds over Guam.