Hurricane Irma: True Color (GOES-16) - 2017

Description

After a long lull in major hurricanes striking the U.S. (2005 - 2017), the 2017 hurricane season packed a real punch with three category 4 hurricanes making landfall in Texas, Florida, US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico within one month in August - September, sending disaster aide efforts reeling and calling on volunteers for help.

Hurricane Irma was the strongest tropical storm ever observed in terms of wind speed, with 36 hours of sustained category 5 185 mph winds. The storm right behind it, Hurricane Maria, seen also in this animation, broke the record for the most intense tropical cyclone to strike the U.S. territories in history. Irma developed on August 30, 2017 near the Cape Verde Islands and rapidly intensified, making landfall as a category 5 in Cuba, Barbuda, Saint Bartheleny, Saint Martin, Anguilla, and the Virgin Islands. As of September 19, 2017, Irma has caused at least 101 deaths, including 44 in the Caribbean and 57 in the United States.

Unlike, Hurricane Harvey, Irma was forecast for many days and therefore there was a massive preparation and evacuation effort between the Caribbean and South Florida. A few days before making landfall in the Florida Keys, the forecast for Irma's direct path changed from the Miami Dade County Atlantic coast region to one that directly struck the gulf coast near Naples. The sheer size of Irma however caused 4.4 million homes to be without power for days some areas even weeks.

The True Color animation showing Hurricane Irma and a little bit of Hurricane Maria (also seen is a Pacific tropical cyclone named Katia), is made from NOAA's next generation GOES-16 satellite before it became operational as GOES-East. GOES satellites orbit about 22,000 miles from the surface of the Earth in geostationary orbit and because they rotate with the Earth, they only see one hemisphere. Science On a Sphere also has a Earth in True Color (GOES-16) - Real-time dataset. Learn more about GOES-16, formerly known as GOES-R in the narrated movie for SOS, GOES-R: Today's Satellite for Tomorrow's Future.