A satellite movie of Hurricane Mitch
| A movie of Hurricane Mitch (October 19-27, 1998) is pictured here. A hurricane is an immense circulating storm, an intense case of a class of weather systems called tropical cyclones. At the center of a cyclone is a region of extremely low atmospheric pressure. Because this region is at a lower pressure than its surroundings, winds blow from the high pressure areas inward toward the central low. The coriolis force (which is due to the rotation of the Earth) causes these winds to be deflected to the side. So instead of the winds blowing straight toward the center of the hurricane, they begin to blow around it. This causes the hurricane to circulate. Hurricanes always rotate counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. Mitch traveled westward in this week. |
Credit: NASA/Goddard
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