Hurricane Earl and My House in the Same Photo!

I know I’ve done a post about hurricane Earl already, but this is just too cool not to mention.

This visible light photo was taken by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) satellite yesterday, and boy is it cool.

You can see the hurricane (obviously) but what makes it so cool to me is that you can see all of southern Ontario and the great lakes. Right where I grew up!

Never thought I’d seem my hometown and a hurricane in the same picture before. Awesome!

Photo: NASA/JPL – CalTech Click for High-Res Version

NASA Flies Plane Into Hurricane Earl

Photo: NASA

NASA, in its ongoing effort to study just about, well, everything, has outdone themselves this time.

They flew a DC-8 into Hurricane Earl in an effort to study how hurricanes and tropical storms form. SWEEEET!

They also got this really cool satellite image of Hurricane Danielle (northern one) and Hurricane Earl (southern one) in the same image.

Photo: NASA Click for Large version

Hurricane Katrina As Seen From Space: 5 Years Later

Its been almost 5 years since the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.

The city of New Orleans has not yet fully recovered from the devasting effect of the hurricane, which made landfall in the United States on August 29, 2005, and the failure of the levees which were supposed to protect the historic city.

As a way of reminding us all of the terrible impact the hurricane had, NASA has released this retrospective video. It contains images and analyses from a wide variety of satellites which imaged the hurricane as it developed, travelled through the Gulf of Mexico, hit the city of New Orleans, and finally it shows the amount of flooding which occured after the hurricane hit.

From a scientific standpoint, it is very interesting to see how the hurricane progressed in its development. Unfortunetly, the images of those trapped on rooftops are still burned into my memory, so the knowledge gained from studying this hurricane is somewhat bittersweet.