Keeping an Eye on Hurricance Florence

What do hurricanes look like from space? It depends on how

you look! We have satellites, cameras and instruments all working together to

give us the big picture of storms like Florence.

As the International Space Station passed over Hurricane

Florence, astronauts and cameras on board got a look down into the hurricane’s

eye.

Our Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission sees

storms all around the planet by measuring rainfall. These measurements come from

a constellation of satellites working together, including some from our partner

organizations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

On Sept. 7, our GPM core observatory satellite flew over

Florence, capturing a 3D image as the storm’s clouds started to break apart

before reforming.

Other NOAA satellites, like GOES, gather high-resolution, detailed

views of hurricanes, letting us peek into the eye of the storm.

Zooming out a bit, the Suomi-NPP satellite helps us track

Hurricane Florence, and the following tropical storms, as they move closer to

landfall or dissipate over the ocean.

From farther away (a

million miles from Earth!), the EPIC instrument on NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite

captured images of all three of these storms as they moved closer to North

America.

We use our space-based and airborne instruments to provide

innovative data on hurricanes to advance scientists’ understanding of these

storms. You can follow our latest views of Hurricane Florence here and get the

latest forecast from NOAA’s National Hurricane Center here.