Hurricane Sandy in New York...

Hurricane Sandy Is Even More Impressive From Space

• By Betsy MasonEmail Author
• October 29, 2012 | 
• 5:36 pm | 
• Categories: Earth Science, Environment

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Every once in a while a storm comes along that is so big, it even looks impressive from space. Hurricane Sandy has grown to be an enormous mass of wind stretching nearly 1,000 miles across at times.

In the whole globe image above, captured by NOAA's GOES-13 satellite on Oct. 28 at 9:02 a.m. EDT, Sandy is a huge white swirl centered just off the east coast of the United States, merging with a cold front on its western edge.

The rest of this gallery contains other impressive views and videos from space, as well as a "living" wind map and a map showing where an estimated 12 million to 15 million people will lose power.

Image: NOAA/NASA GOES Project

This image of Hurricane Sandy was acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite around 2:42 a.m. EDT on Oct. 28. The storm was captured by a special “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as auroras, airglow, gas flares, city lights, and reflected moonlight. In this case, the cloud tops were lit by the nearly full Moon (full occurs on Oct. 29). Some city lights in Florida and Georgia are also visible amidst the clouds.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon/Suomi NPP

Caption: Michael Carlowicz

An animation of satellite observations from Oct. 26-29, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy move along the U.S. East coast and into the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. Sandy had still not made landfall by the end of this animation. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite.

On Monday, Oct. 29, Hurricane Sandy was ravaging the Mid-Atlantic with heavy rains and tropical storm force winds as it closed in for landfall. Earlier, NASA's CloudSat satellite passed over Hurricane Sandy and its radar dissected the storm get a profile or sideways look at the storm. NASA's Aqua satellite provided an infrared view of the cloud tops and NOAA's GOES-13 satellite showed the extent of the storm. The National Hurricane Center reported at 11 a.m. EDT on Oct. 29 that Hurricane Sandy is "expected to bring life-threatening storm surge and coastal hurricane winds plus heavy Appalachian snows." To read more go to: 1.usa.gov/Ti5SgS

NASA/NOAA GOES Project

This full disk animation from GOES-EAST (GOES-13) shows the development of Hurricane Sandy as it begins over Central America and begins its path up through the Caribbean and the east coast of the U.S. This animation ends at 20:45 UTC (4:45 p.m. EDT) on Oct. 28.

Caption: NASA

Hurricane Sandy was viewed Monday morning from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. Sandy had sustained winds of 90 miles an hour as the station passed above the storm.

Image and caption: NASA

Early in the morning on Oct. 25, the Suomi NPP satellite passed over Hurricane Sandy after it made landfall over Cuba and Jamaica, capturing this highly detailed infrared imagery, showing areas of deep convection around the central eye. Besides the highly detailed infrared imagery, the satellite’s day night band captured detailed visible-like imagery of the cloud tops, along with the city lights of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

As most polar-orbiting satellites fly over an area, the visible and infrared sensors scan left to right. Data in the center part of the scan typically has the highest resolution and quality; farther out in the scan, the imagery gets distorted. An improvement in the Suomi NPP's VIIRS sensor over its predecessors reduces the loss of data quality along the length of the scan. Hurricane Sandy is a perfect example of the importance of this improvement – both times the satellite passed over Sandy on Oct. 25 in consecutive orbits, the storm was on the edge of the scan area, which would have meant decreased image quality from previous satellites, but not Suomi NPP. Only at the very limits of the imagery (left hand side) can the edge of scan issues be seen in the day-night band image. These distortions would be much more pronounced in similar imagery from AVHRR or MODIS.

Image and caption: NOAA/NASA/GSFC/SuomiNPP

When NASA's Terra satellite flew over Hurricane Sandy around noon local time on Oct. 25, it captured a visible image of Hurricane Sandy that showed the large extent of the storm. Sandy has grown since the morning hours on Oct. 25 by about 120 miles in diameter according to satellite data.

NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra satellite captured this visible image of Hurricane Sandy over the Bahamas on Oct. 25 at 11:30 a.m. EDT. The MODIS image revealed strong thunderstorms in its southern arm, positioned over the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and eastern Puerto Rico. The center of the storm was moving through the Bahamas, and the northwestern edge had already spread clouds over southern Florida.

At 2 p.m. EDT on Oct. 25, Sandy's maximum sustained winds remain near 105 mph (165 kph) and is a category two hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane wind scale. Sandy's center was located near latitude 23.5 north and longitude 75.4 west, just 25 miles (40 km) east of Great Exuma Island, Bahamas. Sandy is moving toward the north near 20 mph (32 kph) and this motion is expected to continue followed by a turn toward the north-northwest. Sandy is expected to remain a hurricane as it moves through the Bahamas.

At 11 a.m., tropical-storm-force winds extended up to 140 miles (220 km) from the center, making Sandy move than 280 miles in diameter. By 2 p.m., just over three hours later, Sandy had grown. Sandy's tropical storm-force-winds now extend outward up to 205 miles (335 km) from the center, making the storm about 410 miles in diameter!

High pressure rotating clockwise over New England may be set up to push Sandy toward the Mid-Atlantic as a cold front approaches from the west. Various computer models are showing different scenarios for Monday's weather along the U.S. East coast. The current forecast track from the National Hurricane Center brings Sandy in for a landfall in central New Jersey on Tuesday, Oct. 30. Regardless, it appears that Sandy may be a strong wind event for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and northeast.

Image: NASA

Caption: Rob Gutro, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared imagery of Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 27 at 2:23 p.m. EDT that showed some strong thunderstorms (purple) and the extent of Sandy's reach (blue) from the Carolinas into the Ohio Valley and eastern Canada. The thunderstorms in the purple areas were reaching high into the troposphere where cloud top temperatures are as cold as -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius). Sandy's center is clearly identifiable as the circular purple area off shore.

Image: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen

Caption: NASA Rob Gutro

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a near visible (infrared) imagery of Hurricane Sandy on Sun. Oct 28 at 1:29 p.m. EDT that showed the extent of Sandy's reach from the Carolinas into the Ohio Valley and eastern Canada.

Image: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen/

Caption: NASA Rob Gutro

By combining a computer model based on weather forecast data with historical hurricane data, engineer Seth Guikema of Johns Hopkins University has made sobering predictions of power outages on the East Coast.

As of 2 p.m. EDT, Guikema estimates that 4.8 million people in Pennsylvania will lose power, 3.5 million in New Jersey, 2.3 million in Maryland, 530,000 in Delaware (more than half the state's population), 260,000 in Washington D.C. and between 1 million and 3 million in New York. (NYC is difficult to predict.) The total number of people that could be out of power is between 12 million and 15 million, according to Guikema's model. He believes his calculations are conservative and the total could be even higher, possibly up to 19 million depending on what happens in New York City.

Image: Seth Guikema, Johns Hopkins University

This map shows the wind patterns over the United States at 4 p.m. EDT today. This image is actually a static screen grab from an awesome moving wind map made by artists and technologists Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg. I'm a big fan of maps, and this is one of the best new ones I've seen in a while. I check in on it any time there is a big storm.

The wind data that drives the map comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. The near-term forecasts they use are updated every hour, making the map a "living portrait."

Viégas and Wattenberg stress that this is a personal art project that they have made as accurate as they can, and they suggest it not be used to "fly a plane, sail a boat, or fight wildfires."

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