My dear friend, whose family resides in Orocovis, Puerto Rico, recently received photos of his hometown that were taken by a town resident via drone. The photos really show the extent of landslide damage around his small town in the mountains. Residents are currently cut off from the rest of the island.
This video taken at Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, near Hurricane Maria’s landfall point shows an extraordinary reversal of Maria’s eyewall winds multiple times. The first huge gust happens around 0:50, throwing cars around. The reversal of the winds multiple times could be due to tornado-scale mesovortices embedded in the eyewall, in combination with the funneling effect of the high rise building across the street. Interestingly, a video shot by storm chaser Josh Morgerman of iCyclone just a few miles away shows a flow that is smoother and steadier, without wild directional shifts. He writes:“This makes sense, because I was right at the coast, where the wind was coming off the open ocean with very little friction.” (The weird reversing wind video was shot a couple of miles inland, where there was lots of friction.) Maria made landfall in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico as a strong category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph.
x xYouTube Video