Images and Tutorials

Clouds Classification:

Hurricane Analysis Tutorial

This map shows the track of almost every hurricane back to the late 1800's. 

Q) Where do hurricanes in the Atlantic form? How about ones impacting the West Coast?

A) Hurricanes impacting the east coast form off the west coast of Africa, around the countries of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and Mauritania. Hurricanes impacting the west coast form off of the west coast of Central America.

Q) Where do the hurricanes tend to diminish/die off? Why do you suppose this is?

A) Hurricanes seem to die off either when they make landfall, and their moisture supply is cut off, or they fizzle off in the upper latitudes when they are over colder ocean currents. In the Pacific, diminishing is most likely due to hurricanes over cold ocean currents.

Q) What scale is this based on? That is, what is this ranking scale?

A) Hurricanes are based off of the Saffir-Simpson Scale, which ranks them Category 1-5, where Category 1 is the weakest with the weakest winds and highest pressure, and Category 5 is the most devastating, with extremely strong winds and extremely low pressure.

Q) What is the most recent hurricane on this attribute table?

A) The most recent H5 hurricane occurred on September 4, 2007.

This map shows any of the hurricanes that have intersected Louisiana. There have been 339 hurricanes that have intersected the state of Louisiana since the initial keeping of records.

The dates are set up in a numerical fashion, which I imagine will allow them to be listed sequentially by number when it comes time to animate them. There are also times listed in 24-hour style instead of 12-hour style.

Tracking

This map shows the initial dot data that records the longitude and latitude, time, and track of the hurricanes that were recorded for this tutorial.

This map shows the same data, with a line connecting the dots.

Q) Take a look at the way the attribute data in the tracking analyst tutorial differs from the historic hurricane path attribute data. What makes the way the way time is recorded between the two files different? Why, based on the tutorial you just did, is this important to know?

A) The tracking analyst data is formatted as a date and a time, instead of the historic path data which is formatted merely as numbers. The actual times and dates are very important because they can be easily mapped on a time lapse extension, such as Tracking Analyst.

Q) Where do these storms tend to originate?

A) Most of the storms seem to originate off of the western coast of Africa and about halfway between the northern tip of South America and the western edge of Africa.

Q) Do any of the hurricanes take any strange paths? Which one?

Hurricane Isaac – makes a large loop in the middle of the Atlantic and very quickly moves to the northeast.

A) Hurricane Florence also seems to do a small clockwise circle and then quickly move to the north before dying out off the eastern edge of Canada.

Q) When you created the data clock, what three months of the year contained hurricanes? Are these months typical for hurricanes? Why or why not?

A) August, September, and October are the three months containing hurricanes. These three months are very typical for hurricanes in the mid-Atlantic. This is most likely because of increased sea surface temperature during these months, as well as the Coriolis Factor aiding in starting rotation.

Q) Why would one want to take notice when the winds exceed 75 mph. That is, why is this wind speed important when it comes to stages of tropical cyclones?

A) Sustained wind speeds over 75 mph will aid in continuing rotation and strengthening the storm. Also, at winds exceeding that speed, a hurricane is initially categorized.

Q) Where do these storms tend to change intensity? That is are there certain geographic locations that cause the intensity of the storms to strengthen or weaken? What are they? Name at least 3.

A) The storms seem to change intensity in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There is no land, so the effect of friction is very limited. It seems as though the storms seem to lose strength when they move over land, which would make sense because, aside from having not as much moisture, the effects of friction are much greater due to a number of different landforms. They also seem to lose strength as they progress into the upper Atlantic, away from the warmer surface water temperatures, weakening the storms.

Q) Now that you’ve done a few operations, speculate how these tasks might be useful for those in the hazard management/weather forecasting world.

A) These tasks would be very useful in the realm of predictions. Knowing how these storms move through the Atlantic and how they react to certain factors will make for better predicting and add to the well of knowledge that weather analysts currently have.

Q) What are some other ‘tricks’ one might be able to perform in tracking analyst that might prove useful with the information. Feel free to speculate how other data sources could be combined with this information as well.

A) One could show, along with wind speeds, when the storms shift to different categories. This could aid in showing what factors will affect the intensity of a tropical storm system. Including surface water temperatures, water vapor content, dominant wind direction, and temperatures could help to improve the prediction capabilities of the software.