The Hurricane Irma came along the cost of Cuba and made landfall on Florida Keys on Sunday Sept 10, 2017. From the time lapse below can be seen it moved to the north, swept most of Florida area and split into two directions, to the east and west over Georgia on Tuesday, Sept 12, 2017 around 02.00 UTC time. The time lapse was created from NEXTRAD radar data which is operated by National Weather Service (NWS). The data was accessed from Iowa University through Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM). Using WMS-T service, the radar data can be accessed for a specific time. For the created time lapse, the radar data was accessed for 4 days, from Sept 09, 2017 at 16.00 UTC time until Sept 12, 2017 at 13.30 UTC time. The right time is very important parameter in tracking the hurricane path.
The color of the storm in the time lapse shows the precipitation intensity, which the scale can be found on the top right of time lapse animation. The scale starting from light blue, goes to a series of color to the white. Light blue indicates light intensity and white is the maximum intensity. From the time lapse we can see that the precipitation density mostly in blue, green and yellow. The pattern just like three-range circles. The center one is around the eye of hurricane mostly in yellow color, with a small variation of orange and red. The outer range mostly in green and the most outer range is blue. It means the area which was swept over the eye of hurricane received more intense rain and it decreased as it far away from the eye of hurricane.
From the time lapse, can be seen where the hurricane made landfall and
also the precipitation intensity. The time lapse was created using QGIS
and Time Manager Plugin. You can also create the hurricane time lapse on your own. If you are interested, see the tutorial creating hurricane time lapse from radar data. The Hurricane Irma time lapse animation above is in gif format, so you can download it to your drive and use it for presentation or other purposes.
