I may have been through the eye of a tropical thunderstorm. The conditions were winter, '86 returning from Hawaii on about the 25th parallel. Two weeks of pineapple express. About day six or so, rain, visibility 3 miles +/-, wind 15-20 more or less westerly, and six or so feet of windwave on top of larger but hard to estimate swell. Vessel, 30 foot sloop.

First there was a microburst squall. Very high winds for a few minutes. I cleared away the damage and the wind moderated to ten or less, rain slackened and the boat was overtaken by a clear area with a diameter of perhaps two miles. Wind in the clear area was lighter yet. Looking around I saw what appeared to be cloud walls reaching up as high as I could see, becoming brighter with altitude. They started as light charcoal and became pearl grey overhead. The spectacular part was the lightning which was shooting down the column and striking the sea on all sides. Fortunately none struck the boat. There were probably a dozen strikes in the quarter of an hour or so in which the vessel transited the "eye". More accurately, the eye passed over the boat. The lightning strikes were of various colors, magenta, yellow, blue, violet, probably incidental to the ionization of the seawater. It was awe-inspiring and spectacular. The impression was that of a natural cathedral. And I certainly was properly grateful to have seen it with as small a price in gear and skin as I paid.

Now, at 25 degrees of latitude, the "eye" may not have been as well defined as it would have been at 10 degrees or less, but I suspect that the groundtruth experience would be similar in either case.



Charles Warren