Hurricane eye on landfall and relation to wind speeds I am not a meteorologist but watching Hurricane Irma (2017), I have a couple questions about how hurricanes keep their formation based on geographical landmarks.


How does the radius of the hurricane's eye affect the winds felt by
those at different distances from the eye?
When a hurricane reaches land, how does the land affect the eye's
formation?
The winds are at a maximum velocity Vmax in they eye wall, a thin annulus immediately around the eye. With increasing distance the winds fall off. If a hurricane was a Rankine vortex, the wind velocity at radius R from the center of the eye would be V(R) = Vmax X (Reye/R), where Reye is the radius of the eye. In reality friction usually prevents a hurricane from being a perfect Rankine vortex. Instead it typically a modified Rankine vortex, with V(R) = Vmax X (Reye/R)^n, where n is typically in the range 1/2 &lt; n &lt; 3/4 (perhaps n = 2/3 is the best overall average value). Of course this is a radially-smoothed-out wind velocity distribution. In the approach of an actual hurricane, wind does not increase monotonically as R decreases. But V(R) = Vmax X (Reye/R)^2/3 typically approximates the secular trend of its increase.