[Aztlan] 2008 Hurricane Seasons

[Elaine Day Schele]

2008 Hurricane Seasons Begin in Eastern Pacific and Atlantic 

 

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/shownh.php3?img_id=14874

·         Large images 

·         Tropical
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/alma_tmo_2008150
_lrg.jpg>  Storm Alma (29 May; 4.9 MB JPEG) 

·         Tropical
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/arthur_tmo_20081
52_lrg.jpg>  Storm Arthur (31 May; 3.9 MB JPEG) 

Both the eastern Pacific and Atlantic hurricane seasons of 2008 were
inaugurated within a few days of each other in late May and the first days
of June. That these two “season openers” occurred in the same week wasn’t
simply a coincidence: they were related. On May 29, thunderstorms over the
Pacific Ocean about 250 miles southwest of Nicaragua became Tropical Storm
Alma: the first named storm of the 2008 eastern Pacific season. Alma moved
north and made landfall on the coast of Nicaragua. As it crossed Central
America, the storm fell apart as a circulating system, but the remaining
moisture and energy emerged over the Gulf of Honduras to the north. There,
on May 30, those remnants spun up into Tropical Storm Arthur: the first
named storm of the Atlantic season.

On Thursday, May 29, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) <http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov>  on NASA’s Terra
<http://terra.nasa.gov>  satellite observed Tropical Storm Alma as it was
making landfall in Nicaragua. The familiar shape of a hurricane—a pinwheel
of clouds spinning around an obvious eye—is hard to make out in the image.
The center of circulation was just offshore, south of the city of León. The
remains of the storm headed north, and by May 31, when the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) <http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov>
on NASA’s Aqua <http://aqua.nasa.gov>  satellite collected the bottom image,
they were helping to fuel Tropical Storm Arthur. The image shows the storm
making landfall at Belize.

According to the
<http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2008/tws/MIATWSEP_may.shtml?>  National
Hurricane Center, Alma was the first hurricane ever to make landfall on the
Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and it was the first Pacific hurricane to strike
anywhere on the coast of Central America since 1949.

You can download a 250-meter-resolution
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/arthur_tmo_20081
52.kmz>  KMZ file of the storms suitable for use with Google Earth.
<http://earth.google.com/>