GOES-13 Results
last updated 22 May 2013
GOES-13 Results
last updated 22 May 2013
Week of Midwest Tornados (48 MB MOV) 15-21 May 2013.
Day-after-day, warm moist winds from the Gulf bring a low-level river of potent air into the Midwest. The latent energy it carries explodes in the heat of each day into violent thunderstorms. The storms mostly occur along a rise in altitude that triggers convection, creating the surface transition between low wet green plains and high dry brown plains. The time-series ends not with the last storm, but with an anomaly and shutdown on GOES-13 near midnight, satellite local time.
Midwest Killer Tornados (15 MB MOV) 20 May 2013.
Warm, moist Gulf air flowing across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri triggers another day of afternoon tornados, with an EF5-class tornado crossing Moore, OK, a southern suburb of Oklahoma City, killing at least 24 people, many of them children sheltering in an elementary school.
Click here for a Hi-Res animation of the cloud tops in the visible channel (20 MB MOV) 20 May 2013
Midwest Tornados (11 MB MOV) 19-20 May 2013.
Afternoon-to-night tornado outbreaks from Oklahoma to Iowa disturbed the unusually peaceful spring.
This outbreak was the first reported in Iowa since late May last year.
Popocatepetl (0.5 MB MOV) 11 May 2013.
Just a puff of ash on a clear Saturday morning.
Spring Snow Storm (0.5 MB JPG) at 2340 UTC on 10 April 2013.
Sunset in the Mississippi Valley illuminates a powerful front with a 50 F temperature drop, extending from the Gulf to the Great Lakes that dumped a foot of snow across Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska.
Sunglint for Spring (1.3 MB JPG) at 2045 UTC on 22 March 2013.
On the first day of spring, the sun is strongly reflected from the calm waters of the equatorial Pacific, while another Nor-Easter snows on New England.
Popocatepetl (2 MB MOV) 7 March 2013.
While the USA is focused on the east coast blizzard, Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano emits a dense cloud of ash.
Post-Snowquestration (17 MB MOV) 7-13 March 2013.
After the "snowquestration" blizzard, the Nor-Easter drifted across the North Atlantic, gathering energy to visit Europe.
Blizzard Alley (0.2 MB JPG) at 1745 UTC on 7 March 2013.
The Iowa-Wisconsin area is commonly a path for Midwest snowstorms.
The aftermath viewed from space reveals the riverine topography of the region.
Snowquestration (11 MB MOV) 5-7 March 2013.
The last great blizzard of the winter swept across the upper Midwest and mid-Atlantic states, forming another Nor'Easter off the coast that pushed more snow back onto New England.
The storm's formation coincided with the US Government's involuntary sequestration of 5% of the 2013 Federal Budget, in an effort to reduce spending with borrowed money.
Ironically, the blizzard just missed Washington DC, which had shut down the Federal offices for the day on March 6, expecting 5 to 7 inches of snow, but getting less than 2, which promptly melted.
After the Blizzard (0.3 MB JPG) at 1645 UTC on 9 February 2013.
A full-resolution GOES image of clouds and snow across the Great Lakes and New England illustrates the sweep of a February blizzard in the northeastern USA.
Nor'Easter Blizzard (31 MB MOV) 6-9 February 2013.
New England was the victim of a winter cold front and a Gulf-enhanced warm front merging into a classic Nor'Easter off the coast of New Jersey.
The merged storm was held along the coast by a blocking high pressure area in eastern Canada.
Fortunately, a very accurate, well-publicized, 3-day forecast enabled preparation for strong winds, high tides, and 2 to 3 feet of snow in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine.
The impact was much less serious than the nearly identical blizzard in February 1978, which killed 100 people.
Winter Tornados (8.1 MB MOV) 30 January 2013.
An energetic cold front between a 40 F temperature difference spawned cold rain, high winds, and tornados in the northwest Georgia as the front raced up the East Coast.
Lake-Effect Snow (0.3 MB JPG) at 1745 UTC on 22 January 2013.
The powerful arctic air outbreak over the northern USA drove snow off the unfrozen Great Lakes for several days.
Appalachian Snow (1.8 MB JPG) at 1545 UTC on 18 January 2013.
A relatively snow-free winter presents just a smudge of snow in the mid-Appalachian Mountains, even after a massive cold air outbreak east of the Rockies.
Tornados for Xmas (0.4 MB JPG) at 2125 UTC on 25 December 2012.
A total of 26 tornados occurred late in the day in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
That easily topped the record of 12 tornados on Xmas day in 1969.
Including this year's outbreak, there have been 9 Xmas days with tornados since 1950.
As a weather bonus, Oklahoma and northern Texas were paralyzed for the day by the accompanying snowstorm.
Snow on First Day of Winter (0.1 MB JPG) at 1745 UTC on 21 December 2012.
The upper Midwest had no snow accumulation at the end of 2012 until a blizzard laid down more than a foot of snow before moving up the Ohio Valley.
The still-warm stream beds feeding the Mississippi and Missouri rivers show through the snow cover.
Hurricane Alley June-October 2012.
Monthly movies were made from the hourly GOES cloud images overlaid on a color MODIS map for the extended hurricane alley, Mexico to mid-Atlantic and Caribbean to Canada.
Each month is presented in two formats, a half-sized HDTV "MOV", and a full-sized HDTV "MP4".
Sandymation 25-31 October 2012.
A collection of images and movies.
Sandy HDTV (132 MB MP4) on 26-29 October 2012.
This HDTV movie of the GOES clouds on a true-color background map follows Sandy's progress up the East Coast, from the Bahamas to New York.
The strong flow of sub-arctic air and low clouds from the North Atlantic on the day before landfall turned Sandy from a warm hurricane into a cold nor'easter.
Sandy Full Disk (25 MB MOV) 20-31 October 2012.
GOES full disk images on a color map taken every 3 hours for 12 days summarize the birth, life and death of Sandy in the context of all the weather in the northwestern quadrant of the globe.
However, the 3 hour operational cadence in large-screen HDTV format makes the action stroboscopic.
Sandy's Life (65 MB MOV) 20-31 October 2012.
A color movie of the East Coast and Caribbean, at 2 frames per hour for 12 days.
The 30 minute operational cadence in square frame format smooths the action, and the early start shows the gestation of the storm in the tropics north of Panama.
Sandy Landfall (17 MB MOV) on 29 October 2012.
The operational visible images from GOES-13 in HDTV format show Sandy morphing from a hurricane into a "nor'easter" while turning westward and making landfall at sunset.
The high-res greyscale images reveal details in the dynamic cloud tops while the sun is up.
Sandy Superstorm (88 MB MOV) 23-31 October 2012, also with download versions:
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| The surface winds on 30 October 2012 illustrated by http://hint.fm/wind/ show how the superstorm dominated the weather after landfall. |
Sandy Fibonacci (0.04 MB JPG) 29 October 2012.
The hurricane's outflow pattern in this satellite image at landfall fits a Fibonacci Spiral.
Hurricane Sandy vs. Cold Front (0.5 MB JPG) at 1325 UTC on 26 October 2012.
The late-season hurricane approaches an early-season polar outbreak, headed for a Halloween mix-up over the northeastern USA.
Sandy Archives (60 GB collection) 20-31 October 2012.
Our entire collection of GOES raw and processed imagery during the superstorm, useful for making customized productions.
GOES-13 has tremors (6 MB MOV) 23 September 2012.
Some of the infrared images from GOES-13 (GOES-EAST at 75W) started showing a faint high frequency "buzz" at the same time as the mirror scan motors developed loading problems.
Ripples in brightness can be seen along scan lines in the frames of a contrast-enhanced movie from the 6.7 micron water vapor channel over the eastern USA before the Imager was turned off for diagnostic study.
Acatenango in Guatemala (0.5 MB MOV) erupts on 13 September 2012.
Acatenango is a 12,000 foot-high volcano overlapped with "Volcan de Fuego".
Isaac in the Midwest (1.5 MB JPG) 1631 UTC on 31 August 2012.
After coming ashore two days earlier, the remnants of hurricane Isaac drench the drought-stricken Midwest, too late to save the corn crop.
Ileana, Isaac, Kirk and Leslie (0.8 MB JPG) at 1445 UTC on 30 August 2012.
The hurricane season is in full swing with 4 named storms at the end of August, with more brewing in the tropical storm nurseries off the west coasts of Northern Africa and Central America.
Hurricane Isaac in the Gulf (99 MB HDTV MOV) 26-30 August 2012.
The large but disorganized tropical storm slowed after entering the Gulf of Mexico, giving it time to gain enough moisture and energy to make it into a category 1 hurricane headed for New Orleans, exactly 7 years after hurricane Katrina did the same thing.
The storm lingered for over a day off the Louisiana coast, dumping over 12 inches of rain on the lowlands, seriously flooding them and leaving over 700,000 people without power.
Hurricane Isaac at 1 Minute Intervals (39 MB HDTV MOV) during 1200-1800 UTC on 29 August 2012.
NOAA's on-orbit spare geosynchronous satellite, GOES-14 parked at 105W, was used experimentally to scan hurricane Isaac at mostly one-minute intervals during the landfall days on 28-30 August.
This movie uses the morning time series from 29 August to overlay the GOES-observed couds on a background true-color map previously derived from NASA's MODIS land imager.
The GOES-14 cloud images themselves are a blend of 1 km nadir resolution visible albedo with the 4 km resolution infrared (11 micron) radiances.
The rapid-update scans provide a simulation of the high-speed multispectral true-color imagery that will be served by the new GOES-R imager planned for launch in 2015.
Hurricane Isaac Super-Rapid Scans (99 MB HDTV MOV) during 1200-2400 UTC on 28 August 2012.
NOAA's on-orbit spare geosynchronous satellite, GOES-14 parked at 105W, was used experimentally to scan hurricane Isaac at mostly one-minute intervals during the landfall days on 28-30 August.
This movie uses the daylight time series from 28 August to overlay the GOES-observed couds on a background true-color map previously derived from NASA's MODIS land imager.
The GOES-14 cloud images themselves are a blend of 1 km nadir resolution visible albedo with the 4 km resolution infrared (11 micron) radiances.
The rapid-update scans provide a simulation of the high-speed multispectral true-color imagery that will be served by the new GOES-R imager planned for launch in 2015.
Hurricane Ernesto (13 MB MP4) 6-9 August 2012.
Firmly steered by the easterly trade winds, the storm drifts out of the Caribbean and across Yucatan, surprisingly maintaining its strength over land.
Derecho Windstorm (4.5 MB MOV) 29 June 2012.
A derecho (straight-line) windstorm formed in the morning over Iowa, and raced across the upper Midwest to wreak havoc with the power grid around the Chesapeake Bay by midnight. More than a million people were left without power for days in the Washington DC area, including the GOES data reception system that made this movie at NASA-GSFC in Greenbelt MD until the storm struck.
Debby soaks Florida (12 MB MOV) 22-27 June 2012.
Once a tropical storm forms in the Gulf of Mexico, it has to do damage while exiting over land. TS Debby was particularly destructive, swirling for days in the armpit of Florida's panhandle, picking up moisture that fell as feet of rain across northern Florida.
9 Tornadoes in Maryland (2 MB MOV) 1 June 2012
A cold front approaching from the west spawned severe storms along the East Coast, including 9 weak tornadoes in Maryland around sunset.
From the GOES viewpoint, all that surface action is covered by cloud tops.
Beryl on Memorial Weekend (20 MB MOV) 25-28 May 2012.
Beryl demonstrated the unexpected formation of a tropical storm in the Bermuda triangle.
The storm strengthened significantly overnight and then moved rapidly eastward into shipping lanes and onto northern Florida.
Without satellite coverage, we would be nearly blind to such development.
Beryl starts summer (0.1 MB JPG) 26 May 2012 at 2331 UTC.
The second tropical storm to form in May in the Bermuda Triangle, Beryl, is accompanied by the first streamy weather all over the Gulf-saturated lower USA.
While the hurricane season officially begins in June, this year's persistent warm weather over the eastern USA kicked the season off a month early.
Popocatepetl Week (21 MB MOV) 14-22 April 2012.
Routine GOES-EAST visible imagery reveals a week of smoke and ash emission from the volcano southeast of Mexico City. Most of the time, the prevailing westerlies carry the debris far to the east in the morning, while the daily rains bring down the ash before it can go far in the afternoon.
Great Plains Tornados (26 MB MOV) 14-15 April 2012.
The National Weather Service forecast the outbreak 24 hours in advance, and gave prompt and urgent warnings during the event.
This large-format HDTV movie reveals the strong flow of warm, moist air from the Gulf into the advancing cold front.
Texas Tornados (1.5 MB MOV) 3 April 2012.
Very powerful tornados moved through the area just south of Dallas, throwing 18-wheel truck trailers high in the air, demonstrating once again a tornado's skill at finding a trailer park to destroy.
The GOES images reveal the overshooting cloud tops resulting from the strong updrafts, embedded in cirrus cloud debris.
Hourly fulldisks (8.2 MB MOV) 22 March 2012.
The day after GOES-WEST (GOES-15) went off-line on the equinox, March 21st, GOES-EAST (GOES-13) was commanded to take fulldisk images every 30 minutes, in order to provide the best available coverage for both oceans.
The resulting movie is a taste of the global animations that will be available from the much faster Imager coming on GOES-R, circa 2016.
The reflection of the sun proceeding across the calm equatorial Pacific is striking.
Midwest Tornados (8.7 MB MOV) 29 February 2012.
The 6.7 micron infrared channel, which is sensitive to upper air water vapor, reveals a powerful jet stream behind the severe storm front that developed over lower Illinois and Indiana, spawning killer tornados in the middle of the night. The dark streaks are due to dry stratospheric air subsiding just poleward of the jet. The channel is used to find vertical disturbances and strong winds in otherwise clear air.
Great Lakes Snow (0.5 MB JPG) 1730 UTC on 5 March 2012.
Snowfall "on the March" all around the Great Lakes at the end of winter.
First snowfall of 2011-12 (0.7 MB JPG) at 1746 UTC on 6 December 2011.
The previous day's blizzard laid down a massive snow-streak from New Mexico to Lake Superior in the first week of December.
The Life of Sean (11 MB MOV) 3-10 November 2011.
Persistent Tropical Storm Sean in the Bermuda Triangle can be traced back to a swirl over the Midwest a week earlier.
It eventually gets blown away by yet another atmospheric wave from the continent.
Snowtober (0.4 MB JPG) 30 October 2011 at 1645 UTC.
On the day after a record-breaking blizzard passed over the northern Appalachians, the dawn revels massive snow cover that downed leafy trees all over the Northeast USA, leaving 1.5 million people without electrical power for days. The guilty storm lurks east of Cape Cod.
Tropical Storm Lee at New Orleans (1.5 MB JPG) 3 September 2011 at 1440 UTC.
A thunderstorm just south of New Orleans quickly developed into a tropical storm full of rain during the first days of September, dumping a foot of rain in the region.
After that, the storm drifted into the Midwest, aiding and abetting the flow of moisture along the Appalachians and further flooding the East Coast.
Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Katia movies, VGA (640x480) and HDTV (1280x720).
Hurricane Katia and friends (0.7 MB JPG) 2 September 2011 @ 1445 UTC.
Hurricane Katia, in mid-Atlantic, is joined by tropical storms in the North Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Panama, and Cape Verde - not to mention a vigorous ITCZ across the eastern Pacific. By the way, the name "Katia" was introduced to replace "Katrina", since the names of destructive storms are retired.
Hurricane Irene week (57 MB MOV) 21-29 August 2011.
Fog on a New England Morning (0.5 MB MOV) 19 August 2011.
All the Appalachian valleys are fog-filled at dawn, but cleared by the sun by midday.
Wildfire in the Great Dismal Swamp (4.2 MB MOV) 08-10 August 2011.
A persistent wildfire flared up every mid-summer afternoon on Virginia's side of the Great Dismal Swamp, which is heavily forested and appears as a dark green patch when viewed from space. The smoke is not visible at night.
Hurricane Irene (1.7 MB JPG) 25 July 2011 at 2215 UTC.
After passing the Bahamas, the storm developed to category 3 in preparation for its weekend visit to the East Coast.
Puyehue smoking on Sunday (0.2 MB JPG) at 1445 UTC on 3 July 2011.
The stream of ash that began a month ago continues unabated, generally carried to the northwest or northeast as the southern winter winds blow towards warmer latitudes.
Puyehue still smoking (0.2 MB JPG) at 1745 UTC on 26 June 2011.
The Chilean caldera still emits a steady stream of ash, 3 weeks after the initial eruption.
Fortunately, the volume is much less, and the cold winter wind from the south carries it up the coast out over the Pacific, instead of over the Andes into Argentina.
Puyehue weekend (4.6 MB MOV) 24-26 June 2011
Nebraska-Kansas tornados (4.6 MB MOV) 20-21 June 2011.
High winds, hail, and 43 tornados formed after a fine afternoon in the upper midwest.
Puyehue erupts for 2 weeks in Chile (25 MB MOV) 04-16 June 2011.
Ash is ejected continuously into a series of austral winter storms of the "roaring 40's", which carry it as far east as New Zealand, endangering air traffic there. Stuttering puffs on June 16 give hope that the volcano is running down. This movie contains all 445 images taken "way down south" by GOES-13 since the eruption began.
Puyehue ash plume (0.2 MB JPG) at 1445 UTC on 06 June 2011.
After two days of venting, the ash cloud spans 1,000 miles, and reflects a recent shift in wind direction from the south.
Puyehue erupts in Chile (4.6 MB MOV) 04-06 June 2011.
Puyehue-Cordón Caulle, a stratovolcano in a caldera in southern Chile erupts spectacularly on June 4.
The prevailing winter westerlies of the southern ocean drive the high ash cloud across Argentina into the South Atlantic.
Massachusetts tornados (1.2 MB MOV) 01 June 2011.
A line of late afternoon thunderstorms over New England spawned a rare outbreak of tornados in western Massachusetts at 2000-2100 UTC, killing 4 and smashing up Springfield and many nearby communities.
Hurricane Wannabe (12 MB MOV) 01 June 2011.
A cute little storm formed near Bermuda and sailed down along the Atlantic coast to cross Florida and then dissipate in the Gulf, following the reverse of the usual hurricane track.
Tornado Alley HDTV (57 MB MOV) 20-26 May 2011. 
Grimsvotn volcano, Iceland (0.8 MB GIF) 21-23 May 2011, as a GIF movie.
From GOES-EAST, Iceland is just barely visible at the northeast limb, where full-disk scans occasionally reveal the volcano injecting ash into the air above the arctic clouds, where easterly winds carry it towards Greenland.
Joplin tornado (1.3 MB MOV) 22 May 2011.
Shuttle launch cloud (0.3 MB MOV) 16 May 2011.
The next-to-last Shuttle launch at 1346 UTC leaves a puff of rocket exhaust in the thin cloud deck moving over Cape Canaveral that wafts out to sea.
Dixie Tornados (13 MB MOV) 27-28 April 2011.
Dixie Tornados in HDTV (13 MB MOV) 27-28 April 2011
Tornado Outbreak (15 MB MOV) 14-16 April 2011.
Tornado Outbreak in 720p HDTV (24 MB MOV) 14-16 April 2011.
Groundhog Blizzard in HDTV (70 MB MP4) 01-02 February 2011.
In 1920x1080 HDTV size and format, revealing more details of the snow on the ground and winds in the trailing clouds.
Groundhog Blizzard (10 MB MOV) 01-02 February 2011.
Snow, sleet, ice and rain fall in a north-to-south band across a front extending from Oklahoma to Maine, paralyzing about one-third of the USA on Groundhog Day.
Classic Nor'easter (10 MB MOV) 11-12 January 2011.
An off-shore storm drags snow-making clouds onto New England from the north-east.
Christmas Blizzard (11 MB MOV) 25-27 December 2010.
Recipe: pour arctic air down the Mississippi, across the Gulf, and then up the East Coast -- keep the atmosphere stirred, not shaken.
LONG DISCUSSION
This blizzard was the reincarnation of the week-long storm that hit California last week, yet another powerful loop in a world-wide series of disturbances. The recent storms across Europe and Russia are more unusually strong loops in the jet stream. Climatologically, these are due to a variation in the location of the quasi-static high- and low-pressure systems around the northern hemisphere. For instance, there is a high pressure system over the mid-Atlantic (normally, the Bermuda high) accompanied by a low pressure system over Iceland. This year, this "North Atlantic Oscillation" pair weakened and moved eastward. Last summer, that allowed the hurricanes to move northward across the mid-Atlantic instead of the west-Atlantic, sparing the US East Coast. This winter, that pattern allows polar outbreaks to move freely across the eastern USA, freezing the East Coast in December. On the other side of the Atlantic, Europe gets unusual amounts of polar air and snow. For more discussion of the NAO, visit NOAA's Climate Prediction Center).
East Coast blizzards occur in concert with the world-wide ENSO variations, roughly every decade. I can personally recall similar blizzards paralyzing the Washington DC area in 1978, 1983, 1993-4, and 2009-10. Great blizzards paralyzing New York City and Boston are legendary. The expert on the subject works at NOAA: Paul Kocin (paul.j.kocin@noaa.gov, 301-763-8201). He has written government monographs on the subject. He sees a pattern where a loop in the jet stream around a polar high over the Appalachians is redirected back to the northwest by an air mass over Newfoundland, carrying moisture mixed with cold wind back over the upper East Coast, instead of out-to-sea.
I found a book on my shelf titled "Great Blizzards of New York City" by Kevin Ambrose (1994), with photos of great blizzards in 1888, 1899, 1920, 1935, 1947, 1961, 1969, 1978, 1983, 1993 and 1994.
Our animation consists of clouds scanned 3 to 4 times per hour by NOAA's GOES weather satellite overlaid on a true-color map from NASA's TERRA climate satellite. During the day, the cold (colored white) cloud tops observed by the GOES infrared channels are texture-enhanced using the reflected sunlight in visible channel on GOES. Making it look natural involves several thousand lines of computer coding.
Once the overlay was working, we automated it and assemble movies from the recent frames. We offer the color overlays and movies for the previous week on the web (goes.gsfc.nasa.gov). It's an unattended 24/7 service. We are gratified to see our color pictures used by the press to illustrate the hourly progress of storms, though the pictures are usually credited to "AP" instead of "NOAA-NASA".
The GOES views of snow storms are most useful for observing lake-effect snows and offshore intensity. Because snow forms at low altitude and is rather transparent to weather radar, the GOES cloud observations provide data that the weather radar doesn't see.
There are physical limits to snow storm predictability. In the last 30 years, chaos theory has demonstrated that weather and climate is inherently unpredictable to some limit because of natural instabilities in the atmosphere. That limit has been slowly pushed out by better observations and computer models. For instance, the 1978 East Coast blizzard, which developed much like the recent one, was unpredicted. All the 2010 blizzards have had good 3- to 5-day forecasts, with well-advertized uncertainty in the storm track. It's not clear how much past 5 days we can ever make a reliable weather forecast for a naturally unstable situation.
Storms are moved across the country by the jet stream, up around 35,000 ft. Low pressure systems form as unstable loops in the jet stream. Consequently, weather forecasters pay more attention to the upper air wind, which is the cause, than the surface pressure, which is the effect. Broadcast meteorologists concentrate on the surface conditions, because that is where their customers live and work.
Monster Midwest Storm (15 MB MOV) 25-27 October 2010.
After hammering the Pacific northwest, a storm moving across the upper midwest gathered unusual power, creating a low pressure center comparable to a Category 3 hurricane. The accompanying 40-to-50 mph winds, rain, and occasional tornadoes along a front extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border tore up the heartland and partially shut down cities like Minneapolis and Chicago.
Hurricane Matthew over Central America (1.2 MB JPG) at 2345 UTC on 25 September 2010.
After drifting ashore over southern Mexico, the storm stalled and spread into a large area of thunderstorms over the entire region.
Hurricane Igor week (26 MB MOV) Mid-September 2010.
Another category 4 storm moves up the mid-Atlantic Ocean, following the circulation around the Azores high pressure air mass.
What if Columbus had sailed in weather like this? (0.6 MB JPG) at 1545 UTC on 15 September 2010.
With 3 major storms in hurricane alley (Karl, Igor and Julia), a 15th century ship wouldn't stand much of a chance.
Hurricane Igor and friends (0.5 MB JPG) at 1445 UTC on 13 September 2010.
The middle of the hurricane season has a string of tropical storms in hurricane alley, with Igor at category 4 in mid-Atlantic.
Hurricane Earl blows by (64 MB MOV) 30 Aug - 4 Sep 2010.
Earl skirts the East Coast.
The storm following it, Fiona, disintegrates into a steaming little whirlpool, far out to sea.
Danielle, Earl and Fiona (0.5 MB JPG) at 2015 UTC on 30 August 2010.
Danielle stayed well out to sea, but Earl was expected to skirt the East Coast.
Danielle's eye (1.1 MB GIF) at 1145 UTC on 27 August 2010.
At this time, Danielle is a picturesque category 4 hurricane in the mid-Atlantic, not expected to make landfall anywhere.
Frank, Danielle, and Earl (0.7 MB JPG) observed at 1745 UTC on 26 August 2010.
At this time, Frank and Danielle are hurricanes, while Earl is a tropical storm.
Hurricane Alex's life-cycle (30 MB MOV) 15 June - 2 July 2010.
After struggling across hurricane alley during the last two weeks of June, constantly torn apart by upper-level westerlies, the tropical depression reached the calm of the Gulf of Mexico, and spun up into hurricane Alex in July.
The storm worried the Deepwater oil-spill workers south of New Orleans, but the storm just blew into Mexico, sparing the US Gulf Coast, other than flooding the Rio Grande region.
Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador (1.2 MB MOV) 28 May 2010.
A large black ash cloud explodes into the air and is carried out to sea, above Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil.
