Ivan's Analysis of Hurricane Eta

Official Analysis: 150/923

My Analysis: 160/920

In my analysis of Hurricane Eta, I found sufficient evidence to upgrade it to a category five. The reasons for that are shown below.

1: Due to maintenance issues with Hurricane Hunter aircraft, recon flights arrived about 45 minutes after Eta's appearance began to degrade on satellite. This means Eta was likely stronger in the 45 minutes between peak satellite presentation and recon's arrival.

2: Once in the storm, the Hurricane Hunters began to experience problems again, and they were not able to survey the Right-front quadrant of the storm, typically the strongest.

3:Eta had a perfect ring of -90 degree cloud tops, something usually only seen in very strong storms.

.However, the troposphere around Eta was unusually cold, which may have enhanced these.

4: Eta's eye, at peak, had a temperature of 20°c, something typically seen in category five hurricanes. As well as this, the same eye measured only 7 miles wide, a true definition of a pinhole eye.

All of this, along with Eta's excellent Central Dense Overcast, makes me believe Eta was at peak a category five hurricane, with winds of 160 mph and a pressure of 920 millibars.

An upgrade is possible in Eta's Tropical Cyclone Report, which will come out later this year.