On October 9, 2024, Category 3 Hurricane Milton hit Florida with damaging effects, including heavy rainfall and strong winds.
Infrared satellite data tracked the storm, which fluctuated in intensity as it moved. NASA and other agencies used data from space to assist in disaster response efforts.
Hurricane Milton’s Impact on Florida
Hurricane Milton struck Florida’s west-central coast on the evening of October 9, 2024, making landfall south of Tampa as a formidable Category 3 storm. The hurricane pummeled the region with intense rainfall, powerful winds, and a life-threatening storm surge, as reported by the National Hurricane Center.
Visualizing the Storm Through Satellite Data
The animation above captures Milton in the days leading up to, during, and following its catastrophic passage through Florida. The false-color images utilize infrared signals known as brightness temperature, which effectively differentiates cooler cloud formations (shown in white and purple) from the warmer ground surfaces below (depicted in yellow and orange). The data for this animation were gathered using the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instruments aboard various NASA and NOAA satellites.
Since infrared data are based on temperatures rather than visible light, the data can be obtained day or night. This animation shows both daytime and nighttime images, beginning at 3:35 p.m. Eastern Time (19:35 Universal Time) on October 8 and ending at 3:08 a.m. Eastern Time (07:08 Universal Time) on October 10.
External cameras on the International Space Station captured new views of Hurricane Milton at 8:51 a.m. EDT on October 9 as it sped across the eastern Gulf of Mexico headed for a landfall along the west-central coast of Florida in the overnight hours of October 10. At the time of the space station’s flyover, Milton was a strong Category 4 hurricane packing winds of 155 miles an hour, moving northeast at 16 miles an hour. Credit: NASA
The Power of Hurricane Milton
Shortly before the first image of this series, Milton was a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 155 miles (250 kilometers) per hour. It soon grew to a Category 5 storm and then weakened to a still-potent Category 3 storm prior to making landfall on October 9. The storm maintained hurricane-strength intensity and fast, forward speed while crossing Florida, emerging over the western Atlantic as a Category 1 storm with sustained winds of 85 miles (140 kilometers) per hour at the end of this animation on October 10.
On the morning of October 8, 2024, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo of Hurricane Milton as it churned over the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 4 storm. Astronaut photos of the region are being made available to various agencies via the International Disasters Charter and NASA’s Disasters Response Coordination System (DRCS).
NASA’s Role in Disaster Response
NASA’s DRCS has been activated to support agencies responding to the storm, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Florida Geospatial Information Office. The team will be posting maps and data products on its open-access mapping portal as new information becomes available about flooding, power outages, precipitation totals, and other topics.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using MODIS and VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Astronaut photograph ISS072-E-29325 was acquired on October 8, 2024, with a Nikon Z 9 digital camera using a 50 millimeter lens and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 72 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet.
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2 Comments
The power of vortices has been affecting every aspect of human life. Studying the natural nature of hurricane eddies is beneficial for the progress and development of human society and science.
When physics is passionate about studying imaginary particles and things, it is no longer much different from theology.
Scientific research guided by correct theories can help people avoid detours, failures, and exaggeration. The physical phenomena observed by researchers in experiments are always appearances, never the natural essence of things. The natural essence of things needs to be extracted and sublimated based on mathematical theories via appearances , rather than being imagined arbitrarily.
Everytime scientific revolution, the scientific research space brought by the new paradigm expands exponentially. Physics should not ignore the analyzable physical properties of topological vortices.
(1) Traditional physics: based on mathematical formalism, experimental verification and arbitrary imagination.
(2) Topological Vortex Theory: Although also based on mathematics (such as topology), it focuses more on non intuitive geometry and topological structures, challenging traditional physical intuition.
Topological Vortex Theory points out the limitations of the Standard Model in describing the large-scale structure of the universe, proposes the need to consider non-standard model components such as dark matter and dark energy, and suggests that topological vortex fields may be key to understanding these phenomena. Topological vortex theory heralds innovative technologies such as topological electronics, topological smart batteries, topological quantum computing, etc., which may bring low-energy electronic components, almost inexhaustible currents, and revolutionary computing platforms, etc.
Topology tells us that topological vortices and antivortices can form new spacetime structures via the synchronous effect of superposition, deflection, or twisting of them. Mathematics does not tell us that there must be God particles, ghost particles, fermions, or bosons present. When physics and mathematics diverge, arbitrary imagination will make physics no different from theology. Topological vortex research reflections on the philosophy and methodology of science help us understand the nature essence of science and the limitations of scientific methods. This not only has guiding significance for scientific research itself, but also has important implications for science education and popularization.
Today, so-called official (such as PRL, Nature, Science, PNAS, etc.) in physics stubbornly believes that two sets of cobalt-60 rotating in opposite directions can become two sets of objects that mirror each other, is a typical case that pseudoscience is rampant and domineering.
Please witness the exemplary collaboration between theoretical physicists and experimentalists (https://scitechdaily.com/microscope-spacecrafts-most-precise-test-of-key-component-of-the-theory-of-general-relativity/#comment-854286). Some so-called scholars and academic publications blatantly talk nonsense and hardly know what shame is.
Let us continue to witness together the dirtiest and ugliest era in the scientific and humanistic history of human society. The laws of nature will not change due to misleading of certain so-called academic publications or endorsements from certain so-called scientific awards.
Many people moved to Florida’s west coast from places with harsh winters — thinking they’d found Paradise.
But it was Milton who gave us Paradise Lost — twice now.