TS Edouard: August 5 Update A

As expected, he made landfall a short time ago along the upper Texas
coast, north of Galveston and close to the LA border/Sabine Pass. Winds
are 65 mph, and central pressure is 997mb, so he's a decent sized TS
(39-73 mph). He's now moving inland in a W-NW direction at 14 mph and is
located at 29.6N, 94.2W. There's a lot of rain and thunderstorm activity
associated with this system - more of a rain event than a wind event I
think. That's because he picked up a lot of moisture from the very warm
waters just off that TX/LA coast - warmer than 31 deg C.

This is my last entry in Edouard. Another good little storm - took some of
the heat without being too large. :)

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"Satellite Imagery Primer - Part Deux"

Yesterday I covered how you can look at a storm close up. Today, we'll
look at the bigger picture.

1. Go to the National Hurricane Center website satellite link page:
www.nhc.noaa.gov/satellite.shtml

2. Scroll down to the 3rd section that contains two columns: "Atlantic
Views" and "Pacific Views". Again, these data are from the GOES system of
satellites.

3. Under this heading you will see sub-headings: "Atlantic Wide View",
"Western Atlantic" etc. which gives you more of a basin-wide sort of view.

4. Under each one is a list of 4 different types of images. As for the
close-up imagery, if you want the latest still snapshot of any of the
images, click on 'Image'. For a movie, click on 'Loop' (this may take a
bit more time to load onto your machine). At the bottom of each image or
movie is a date and time stamp. The time is in UTC (Universal Time
Coordinate/ Coordinate Universal Time) and is about 4 hours ahead of EST
in the summer. So for example, 17:45 UTC is actually 13:45 Eastern
Standard Time.

For example, look under Atlantic Wide View. The three most
useful images:
- "Visible": This is a visible image in black and white.
- "Infrared": This is an infrared image and give you the temperature of
the cloud tops and hence an indication of how much convection (rain,
thunder etc) is actually going on. The information on the color scheme is
in yesterday's entry.
- "Water vapor": This shows you where the atmosphere has dry
air (brown) or whether there is already some water vapor (not brown).

5. Click on any of the loops (if you can). Once it has loaded, across
the top you will see a number of little buttons. Click the one that says
'LatLon' and it will draw a lat/long grid over the image. Click on
'TropFcstPts' and it will add the latest Forecast Track. Have a play -
click the buttons.

If you can't remember the website for this satellite page, go to the home
page of the National Hurricane Center (www.nhc.noaa.gov) and there's a
link in the left column (under "Get Storm Info") - "Satellite". That will
take you to the page you need.

So there we have it - satellite imagery at your fingertips. Now when you
read future entries, you won't be thinking 'what the heck is she talking
about'. O.k., so maybe you still will... but hopefully this helped a wee
bit.

That's all until the next one, which, should it develop, will be called
'Fay' (gosh, I hope I don't mess up the spelling of that one!).

Toodle pip,
J.

Blogs archived at: http://www.jyotikastorms.blogspot.com/
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DISCLAIMER:
These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not
the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an
evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the
National Hurricane Center's official forecast and the National Weather
Service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away,
run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.
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