The 2018 Atlantic hurricane season is the second in a row to feature three simultaneous storms–the most recent, and most dangerous being Florence which reached Category 4 status earlier in the week (now at a Category 2) as it moves within a day of the Carolinas and US Mid-Atlantic Region. NOAA has a full suite of tools at their disposal for forecasting and monitoring storms including buoys, hurricane-chasing airplanes, and a fleet of satellites that monitor weather and climate around the globe.
The newest satellite in NOAAs arsenal is GOES-16 (formally GOES-R) which sits in geostationary orbit above the Americas and provides high resolution, near-realtime imagery of the Western Hemisphere across visible, infrared, and near-infrared spectral bands. Because of its unique orbit, GOES-16 is able to provide live snapshots of the entire Earth–commonly referred to as full disk images. To give you a sense of the power in this storm, we’ve used our SATcat tool to build full resolution video from the GOES-16 vector data so you can see the movement and formation of the storm across the Atlantic.
View the entire playlist of Florence GOES-16 video
We also have an archive of the 2017 hurricane season where you can watch and scrub video of each named storm from formation to landfall/dissipation.
Finally, if you’re in the path of Florence or in a mandatory evacuation zone–stop reading this, get to a safe location, and monitor the storm track from the National Hurricane Center’s official tracking page.