Rita Recon She's A Hurricane

UPDATE: 1:15 PM Eastern:

More recon data is in, indicating that Rita has 100 mph winds at the surface (so she's a Cat 2).

I spent some time yesterday writing a decoding program for the reconnaissance data from government planes flying into Rita.

When they fly the planes in, they transmit a set of data every few minutes, which contains data measured every 30 seconds. This data is now available on AccuWeather.com, Premium, and Professional, as well as WeatherMatrix.

The automated output from the recon decoding currently shows:

10:00 AM: During reconnaissance of tropical system RITA a maximum sustained wind speed of 90 mph at 9978 feet, and a maximum wind gust of 92 mph at 9978 feet, were found by the government plane.

A little earlier, they had found hurricane-force winds lower, which translated to hurricane-force winds at the surface, causing the government's National Hurricane Center to upgrade Rita to a hurricane. For this translation, they estimate based on a number of factors including storm size and pressure gradient.

Because I'm so busy I'm brainless, I didn't start archiving the data until just now.