Hurricane Emily Graphic

Hurricane Emily Graphic from Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton NJ

Forty-eight hours before Hurricane Emily brushed North Carolina's Outer Banks in 1993, the National Weather Service's Cray C90 supercomputer produced this view of what the storm should be doing at 8 p.m. EDT on Aug. 31, 1993 (0000 UTC - universal coordinated time - Sept. 1). The computer was using a then-experimental model developed by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Now, it has become one of the key tools used by National Hurricane Center forecasters. In the view, Emily is off the Outer Banks. The vertical scale is exaggerated. The area that looks like clouds represents parts of the storm where relative humidity would be 91%. This helps determine the amount of rain and other features. The colored shading at the earth's surface shows forecast rain with highest amounts in red. Yellow bands with red bands farther out surround the storm's calm eye. The white circles represent barometric pressure at the surface with the eye as a low-pressure bull's eye. The white arrows show wind directions at the surface. The red arrows show air moving upward. The largest red arrow on the north side is where air was forecast to be rising fastest, making this the most turbulent part of the storm.

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