Eyewall replacement cycle

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In meteorology, an eyewall replacement cycle, also called a concentric eyewall cycle, is a process whereby some of the outer rainbands of a tropical cyclone with an eye strengthen and organize into a ring of thunderstorms—a new, outer eyewall—that slowly moves inward and robs the original, inner eyewall of its needed moisture and angular momentum. Since the strongest winds are in a tropical cyclone's eyewall, the storm usually weakens during this phase, as the inner wall is "choked" by the outer wall. Eventually the outer eyewall replaces the inner one completely, and the storm may re-intensify. They naturally occur in intense tropical cyclones with maximum sustained winds greater than 33 m/s (64 kn; 119 km/h; 74 mph), or hurricane-force, and particularly in major hurricanes of Saffir–Simpson category 3 to 5. The discovery of this process was partially responsible for the end of the U.S. government's hurricane modification experiment Project Stormfury. This project set out to seed clouds outside the eyewall, apparently causing a new eyewall to form and weakening the storm. When it was discovered that this was a natural process due to hurricane dynamics, the project was quickly abandoned. Almost every intense hurricane undergoes at least one of these cycles during its existence. Recent studies have shown that nearly half of all tropical cyclones, and nearly all cyclones with sustained winds over 204 kilometres per hour (127 mph; 110 kn), undergo eyewall replacement cycles. Hurricane Allen in 1980 went through repeated eyewall replacement cycles, fluctuating between Category 5 and Category 4 status on the Saffir–Simpson scale several times. Typhoon June (1975) was the first reported case of triple eyewalls, and Hurricane Juliette and Iris (2001) were documented cases of such.