Hurricane Danielle

On August 27, 2010, Hurricane Danielle became a major hurricane. This makes Danielle the first major hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season. Overnight, Danielle blossomed from a Category 2 hurricane to a Category 4. NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite captured these images of the hurricane as it was becoming more intense.

The first image is simply a top down view of Hurricane Danielle showing the regions of heaviest rainfall within the storm. As you can see, there is a very powerful thunderstorm near the eye of the hurricane that is producing rainfall rates in excess of 50 millimeters per hour.

The lower image shows a three-dimensional view of Danielle provided by the TRMM Precipitation Radar. As before, the colors reflect rain rates, with red being the most intense rain, and blue being the least intense rain. Tall towers of clouds—very strong thunderstorms—rise over the section of the eyewall where TRMM observed the most intense rain. These tall towers are the key to Danielle’s intensification.

via : Hurricane Danielle

This story written by Paul Adams

Paul Adams leads an award-winning, diverse contractor team that runs a federal high performance computing facility where he has worked for 17 years. He loves getting his hands on the latest visualization and computer hardware, astronomy, aerospace engineering, working with the poor, and ringing cowbells.