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Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

nytimes.com

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Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#11

Post by sp332 »

volkk wrote: post #7

> In a NOAA reconnaissance mission, a plane flew through the eye wall to gather data on the storm, recording winds of 139 miles per hour at sea level. What kind of planes can safely fly through a storm like this? Or is the eye a lot safer to go through?

NOAA Hurricane hunters fly WP-3 Orions. https://www.omao.noaa.gov/learn/aircraft-operations/aircraft... USAF 53rd Weather Reconniassance Squadron fly WC-130s. http://www.militaryaircrafthistorian.com/53rd_wrs.html

Inside the eye can be calm, but the highest winds, wind shear, tornadoes, rainfall, and hail, are in the eye wall.

Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#12

Post by dsr_ »

koolba wrote: post #2

These images are amazing. In particular the zoom in view on the Caribbean showing the direct hit to St Martin. > In a NOAA reconnaissance mission, a plane flew through the eye wall to gather data on the storm, recording winds of 139 miles per hour at sea level. I don't know who the pilot is for this but he's got bigger balls than me.

http://www.hurricanehunters.com/ -- The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, from the Air Force Reserve.

Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#13

Post by amelius »

I was armchair-wondering what would have happened if North Korea would have tested their H-bomb in the eye of a hurricane instead, but I found this old broken HN post: [1]. It turns out not to be a good idea. Who would have thought? :)

On the other hand, I'm still curious if a "directed" explosion (i.e., not radial but say with only an x-component) could accomplish something.

PS: It is a pity that the early formation of the hurricanes is not visible in the video.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=698754

Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#14

Post by volkk »

sp332 wrote: post #11
volkk wrote: post #7

> In a NOAA reconnaissance mission, a plane flew through the eye wall to gather data on the storm, recording winds of 139 miles per hour at sea level. What kind of planes can safely fly through a storm like this? Or is the eye a lot safer to go through?

NOAA Hurricane hunters fly WP-3 Orions. https://www.omao.noaa.gov/learn/aircraft-operations/aircraft... USAF 53rd Weather Reconniassance Squadron fly WC-130s. http://www.militaryaircrafthistorian.com/53rd_wrs.html Inside the eye can be calm, but the highest winds, wind shear, tornadoes, rainfall, and hail, are in the eye wall.

I tried to read a bit about it, but couldn't really find much in terms of--what makes these planes a lot more durable than your standard 737/747?

Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#15

Post by eCa »

koolba wrote: post #2

These images are amazing. In particular the zoom in view on the Caribbean showing the direct hit to St Martin. > In a NOAA reconnaissance mission, a plane flew through the eye wall to gather data on the storm, recording winds of 139 miles per hour at sea level. I don't know who the pilot is for this but he's got bigger balls than me.

You might enjoy this as well: https://www.wunderground.com/resources/education/hugo1.asp

Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#17

Post by kobeya »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

Wow, just wow. I didn't realize there finally are more cameras that can provide this image quality in space, beyond the one that is (was?) on the ISS. Also kudos to NYT for the way they put it together. I'm mesmerized by the globe video.

The "one on the ISS" is usually an astronaut looking out the window ;)

Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#18

Post by phkahler »

jashkenas wrote: post #6

It's nice to see that folks are enjoying this — it was a group effort to wrestle the 22.3 gigs of imagery frames over FTP and get them cropped, processed, overlaid and sorted in time. For anyone who wants to dig deeper, the RAMMB branch of NOAA in Colorado maintains a page of GOES16 loops of the day: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop_of_the_d... ... and also runs a fancy imagery viewer where you can…

It would be really awesome to have this as wallpaper on a 4K monitor and have it update every 15 minutes. Is there a fixed URL to the most recent image?

Re: Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From Above Earth

#19

Post by noir_lord »

carlmcqueen wrote: post #4

New York Times' ability to display data, information and stories visually on the internet is truly a wonderful standard to see. I really enjoyed the layout of this page, where the world sits, how the colors in the background don't take away from the effect from the day/night transitions. It is just wonderful.

NYT is just generally excellent when it comes to online news media, the one other paper I can think of that comes close is The Guardian but NYT's visualisations are a class of their own.
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