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"The Anatomy of a Hurricane"

If you are a current resident of Florida you are absolutely familiar with what a hurricane is. In fact currently were witnesses to history in this 2005 Hurricane Season. This season has been the most active and dangerous hurricane season ever. We've gone through all the named storms and a good beginning of the Greek alphabet.

Hurricanes are an amazing act of nature and product of weather. This year the National Hurricane Center and local meteorologists have been earning their pay and getting little sleep in tracking and predicting these awe inspiring storms.

Hurricanes follow along paths or tracks. "The storm can be thought of as being steered by the surrounding environmental flow throughout the depth of the troposphere. The movement of hurricanes has been likened to a leaf being carried along by the currents in a stream, except that for a hurricane the stream' has no set boundaries" (Lutgens and Tarbuck p328).

One of the currently used predicting techniques that the hurricane forecasters utilize is called the Dvorak technique. This methodology estimates the intensity of the cyclone through pictures. Forecasters use this method by looking at a "current satellite picture of a tropical cyclone, then matching the image versus a number of possible pattern types: Curved band Pattern, Shear Pattern, Eye Pattern, Central Dense Overcast Pattern, Embedded Center Pattern or Central Cold Cover Pattern. If infrared satellite imagery is available for Eye Patterns then the scheme utilizes the difference between the temperature of the warm eye and the surrounding cold cloud tops. The larger the difference, the more intense the tropical cyclone is estimated to be" (Hurricane Research Division, FAQ).

With this technique winds and centralized pressure are assumed to always be consistent. "However, since the winds are really determined by the pressure gradient, small tropical cyclones (like the Atlantic's Andrew in 1992, for example) can have stronger winds for a given central pressure than a larger tropical cyclone with the same central pressure. Thus caution is urged in not blindly forcing tropical cyclones to "fit" the above pressure- wind relationships" (Hurricane Research Division, FAQ).

Measuring winds and pressure properly are important because this system is used to determine the storms intensity and ultimate damage by being placed as a category 1 5 severity. In the past hurricane prediction for landfall was one to three days out. Today more

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