NASA sees Hurricane Irma affecting south Florida

As Hurricane Irma approached southern Florida, a NASA satellite captured a night-time image of the storm in the Florida Straits and identified where the strongest storms were occurring within Irma's structure. NOAA's GOES satellite provided a visible image at the time of Irma's landfall in the Florida Keys.


As Irma moved along the coast of Cuba, the storm weakened to a Category 3 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. After moving away from the northern coast of Cuba, Irma passed over waters that are warmer than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Those warm waters enabled the storm to re-strengthen from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 4 hurricane.
On Sept. 10, at 3:38 a.m. EDT (0738 UTC) the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured an infrared view of Irma at night as it moved north from the northern coast of Cuba toward the Florida Keys. The image revealed that Irma's eye had become clear again. The image also showed the city lights in the southeastern U.S.
VIIRS also showed temperatures of Irma's cloud tops to indicate where the strongest part of the hurricane is located. The coldest cloud top temperatures indicate the strongest storms. The VIIRS image showed the well-defined eye of Irma with strong thunderstorms around the eye which is indicative of an intense tropical system. Strongest thunderstorms with coldest cloud tops were as cold as 190.1 Kelvin (minus 83 degrees Celsius/minus 117.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
At 9:10 a.m. EDT on Sept. 10, Irma made landfall at Cudjoe Key in lower Florida Keys.



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-nasa-hurricane-irma-affecting-south.html#jCp