another report on Brazil storm

[msbee]

Tropical Storm Lashes Brazil, Kills One


Sunday March 28, 2004 9:31 AM

By BERND RADOWITZ

Associated Press Writer

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - A child died in a collapsed house and seven fishermen were missing and feared dead early Sunday as a large spiraling storm lashed the coast of southern Brazil, Civil Defense officials said.

Meanwhile, Brazilian and U.S. meteorologists disagreed over whether the storm was a hurricane - the first on record in the South Atlantic.

``It has gotten more severe in the last two hours,'' said Santa Catarina state Civil Defense official Marcio Luiz Alves.

He said a child died in a collapsed house when an area of beach resorts was hit by the high winds. A fishing vessel with seven people on board was missing, while four other vessels were struggling to get to shore, Alves said.

The storm, dubbed Catarina by meteorologists, hit the coasts of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost states, late Saturday with heavy rains and winds of up to 60 mph.

The storm damaged homes, downed trees and knocked out power for several hundred thousand people across some 40 municipalities, according to civil defense officials in the two states.

``We are now bracing for the worst, which could come in the next couple of hours,'' said Ariel Goncalves, a spokesman for the Rio Grande do Sul Civil Defense Agency.

The storm hit land around the beach resort of Laguna, a town of 40,000 people. It also struck Torres, a city of 400,000 in the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Laguna and Torres are about 500 miles south of Rio de Janeiro.

Meanwhile, there was a debate among Brazilian and U.S. meteorologists over whether the storm was a hurricane.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Florida estimated the storm was a full-fledged, Category I hurricane with central winds of between 75 and 80 mph, making it the first hurricane ever spotted in the South Atlantic. AccuWeather, Inc., a private forecasting company, said it also considered the storm a hurricane.

Brazilian scientists disagreed, saying the storm had top winds of 50 to 56 mph, far below the 75 mph threshold of a hurricane.

``Winds and rains will not be significant, so we don't need to alarm the population,'' meteorologist Dr. Gustavo Escobar of the Brazilian Center for Weather Prediction and Climatic Studies said earlier Saturday.

U.S. meteorologists said they were baffled by the Brazilian position.

``We think the Brazilians are, quite frankly, out to lunch on this one,'' said Michael Sager, an AccuWeather meteorologist. ``I think they're trying to play it down and not cause a panic. I don't know what they're doing, but they're obviously wrong.''

All sides said they were basing their estimates on satellite data, since the United States has no hurricane hunter airplanes in the area and Brazil doesn't own any.

Satellite images showed a spiral-shaped mass of clouds with an open area in the center. Escobar called it an ``extra-tropical cyclone.''

Sager said the storm had a clear, well-defined eye and that it had lasted for more than 36 hours. Storms that are not hurricane-strength sometimes form strong eyes, but not for that long, he said.

Kelen Andrade, another meteorologist with the Brazilian center, said the storm was swirling only in a clockwise motion and was not showing motion in the opposite direction at higher altitudes, another mark of a hurricane. Sager disagreed.

``If you know what you're looking at, you can see that counterrotating quite readily,'' he said.




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