Team Training Activities

Observing a Hurricane from Space  
To learn how to track hurricanes, it's useful to begin by looking at how they appear in satellite images and how they behave as they move across the earth's surface.  As an example, study the GOES 7 images below showing the path of Hurricane Andrew from Sunday, August 23 through Thursday, August 27, 1992.  

• Click here for the Movie Catalog on the Public Use of Remote Sensing Data Web Site.  Scroll down to these movies of Andrew:

Hurricane Andrew Fly-By: (MPEG, 350 kB; QuickTime, 2.5 MB)  Hurricane Andrew Time Series by Nathan Gasser: (MPEG, 660 kB (B&W))

• Click here for a QuickTime movie of Hurricane Andrew using Simple Player. 

Questions 

• The "eye" of a hurricane is its center.  Can you see the eye of Andrew in all of the images? 
• How could you determine the center of a hurricane if the eye was not visible? 
• Which way do the cloud patterns associated with the hurricane rotate, clockwise or counterclockwise? (Be sure the movie is running forward.)  
• What kind of pressure system is Andrew exhibiting, high or low? (Recall the cloud patterns associated with each kind of pressure system.)  
• In what state(s) did Andrew's eye make landfall? 

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