Have you ever heard a meteorologist refer to "eye wall replacement" in a strong hurricane? If you were confused about what exactly that means, AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno breaks it down here.
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00:00 We continue to track Hurricane Lee in the Atlantic, as are the hurricane hunters, who got quite a show from the monster storm last night.
00:07 The hurricane hunters captured this stunning video last night as lightning flashed in the storm's eye.
00:14 And you can see that stadium effect there. Bernie always gets excited about that.
00:17 And speaking of the eye of a hurricane, Bernie Rano is standing by with an interesting weather-wise topic tonight. Bernie?
00:25 Alright, in tonight's weather-wise segment, where we take something complex in the meteorological world and make it easy to understand,
00:31 I'm going to try my hand at this. A very complex subject matter called eye-wall replacement cycle.
00:37 It happens in hurricanes. I can give you an example. Let's go to Hurricane Lee earlier, where you can clearly see the eye on the infrared satellite picture.
00:46 Notice how it goes away, and then it comes right back. That was an eye-wall replacement cycle.
00:53 It happens naturally in intense tropical cyclones. Usually, it's category 3 or greater.
00:59 That's maximum staying winds of at least 111 miles per hour. What happens is, the organized outer eye-wall replaces an older eye-wall.
01:08 When that happens, you lose the eye on the infrared satellite picture. There will be a loss of wind intensity.
01:15 But then, as the eye comes back and it tightens a little bit, typically, the tropical cyclone will strengthen a little bit.
01:23 Think about this. It's almost like a snake shedding its skin, right? The old skin with the new.
01:28 That's what happens with these eye-wall replacement cycles.
01:32 And I think we're going to see this with Lee throughout the weekend, but I think it's important to note,
01:37 while there is going to be fluctuations in the wind intensity right through Monday, I don't think it's going to be a whole lot.
01:46 Because as Lee continues to go through this red area, very warm water, abundant moisture, and virtually no wind shear.
01:54 So while we will continue to see these eye-wall replacement cycles, it usually takes a couple of hours to occur,
02:00 I think for the most part, the strength of Lee is not going to change a whole lot right into Monday.