Wednesday, October 19, 2005

wilma blows up

wilma blows up

Last night, Hurricane Wilma was a category 1 hurricane; this morning it has rapidly increased in strength, and is now a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Wind speeds are now 175 miles per hour (280 km/h) and the central pressure is 882 millibars (88.2 kPa), making it the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.




I'm in Orlando, Florida right now; Wilma should be directly overhead on Saturday at around 8pm. By that time it should have dropped down to a category 4 hurricane. Of course, yesterday the NOAA was predicting the Wilma would only reach category 2 before dying down, and instead it intensified, with the winds increasing by more than 60 miles an hour beyond what they had predicted.

Here's the visible-light image of Wilma from about two hours ago:



and the infrared image:



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