[snowsislander]

holy cow, 700 mb, can that be right?

Do major hurricanes always have such low pressures?

I think that the important millibar figure is the one on line H:

H. EXTRAP  944 mb

but I don't know much about all of this weather-reading, so hopefully more knowledgeable folks will let us know for sure.

[mewzilla]

Gilbert checks in at second lowest recorded pressure, IIRC, with a reading of 888. So 944 ain't good, but I guess it could be worse. I forget which storm had the lowest. I'll see if I can find that.

[USAF0021]

The pressure at the surface is extrapolated (EXTRAP) from the 700 mb level in order to get an estimate. (The hurricane hunters can't actually fly near the surface, they fly above where the winds are less violent (This is true for warm core cyclones, winds decrease with height, which is the opposite for cold core cyclones (the typical L's that you see at the midlatitudes on a weather map)) It says the height where 700 mb is found is at 2604 meters, so they use an equation that estimates what the pressure would be if you brought a parcel of air at the 700 mb level down due to the surface.