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Wow Video: The 5 minute 2010 hurricane season

Posted at 6:00 AM on December 8, 2010 by Paul Huttner (3 Comments)
Filed under: Hurricanes

This is just too good.

If you have a minute (okay 5 minutes) fire up this mesmerizing NOAA time lapse video of the 2010 Atlantic Hurricane season. The 6 month hurricane season is condensed into 5 minutes. Run this full screen for the full effect.


A couple of key features jump out to my eye immediately and are worth looking for.

-Notice how as the storms form and move west in the tropical easterlies, then are suddenly steered away from the USA by the strong westerly winds over the eastern USA. We call this "recurvature." In 2010, the westerlies were relatively strong and quite persistent. Notice how they tear away at hurricane circulation as they encounter the shearing winds.

The strong westerlies combined with a frequent low pressure circulation just off the east coast over the North Atlantic; as they shoved one storm after another harmlessly away form U.S. soil in 2010.

-Also focus your eyes in the upper left part of the screen over Minnesota. You can see the fast moving jet stream dealing storm cluster after storm cluster over the Upper Midwest during the summer of 2010.

This pattern produced a record 104 (final) tornadoes in Minnesota in 2010, smashing the previous annual record of 74 from 2001, with Minnesota leading the nation in tornadoes for the first time ever on record in 2010.

It's pretty cool to watch half a year's weather wiz by in 5 minutes from 22,000 miles in space.

PH


Comments (3)

this is very cool! thanks for posting.

Posted by Sarah | December 8, 2010 7:11 AM

It's neat to see our "Big Wind" around Oct. 27 too. Thanks

Posted by Andy | December 8, 2010 9:11 AM

Really cool video. I also noticed the October 27th land hurricane, along with the June 17th tornado outbreak as well.

Posted by a different andy | December 8, 2010 9:18 AM

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