Landfalling hurricanes have many hazards associated with them, most notably severe winds, flooding rains, destructive storm surge and tornadoes. Numerous studies have investigated techniques for improving the forecasting of the track and intensity of hurricanes. Fewer studies have investigated the storm-scale predictability associated with hurricane convection including the strong convective cells often found in outer hurricane rainbands. A high resolution numerical simulation of Hurricane Opal (1995) has been carried out that indicates a high degree of predictability may be possible of the severe convective potential associated with outer rainbands of a landfalling hurricane. Not only does the simulation represent well the observed convective environment for this event but also the simulation develops convective elements with similar behavior and structure to those observed. Additionally, this simulation developed a fine-scale banding pattern embedded within the broader hurricane rainbands. These fine-scale bands differ from those captured in previous numerical studies and appear to be analogous to banding structures recently observed by operational radar platforms. Analysis of the results indicates that this banding structure is a response to gravity waves that form from Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the surface layer radial inflow. Formal publications are currently in review.

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