It's not a hurricane unless it has sustained winds of 74 mph which Irene did not have moving up the east coast of the US

8/29/11, "When Did Irene Stop Being a Hurricane?" Cliff Mass Weather blog

"On Sunday morning Anderson Cooper of CNN was asking about the strong winds that were being forecast and this brings up something that has really bothered me about the storm: there is really no reliable evidence

• of hurricane-force winds

• at any time the storm was approaching North Carolina or moving up the East Coast.

First, what is a hurricane? The official definition is that a hurricane is a tropical cyclone with SUSTAINED winds of 64 kt or more (74 mph or more). A gust of 65 kt or more does not indicate a hurricane unless the sustained winds reach 64 kt.

I took a look at all the observations over Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. Not one National Weather Service or FAA observation location, not one buoy observations, none reach the requisite wind speed.

• Most were not even close.

Surely, one of the observations upwind of landfall, over Cape Hatteras or one of the other barrier island locations, indicated hurricane-force sustained winds?

• Amazingly, the answer is still no."...

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8/28/11, "Only Two Locations Had 85 MPH Gusts," Real Science

"http://www.digtriad.com/

NOAA said that maximum average wind speeds at landfall were 85 MPH, hurricane winds stretching outwards for 90 miles. In fact, only two locations even had gusts over 85 MPH.

The 115 MPH is a mathematical outlier from a “trained spotter” – which is not credible and should be thrown out. The nearby weather station at Beaufort, NC, had a

• max speed of 53 MPH and peak gust of 70 MPH.

http://www.wunderground.com/"

via Instapundit, via Tom Nelson