How to describe a Hurricane’s Life

A hurricane begins as a tropical wave, a westward-moving area of low air pressure. As humid, moist air over the ocean rises in the low air-pressure area, surrounding air replaces it, and circulation forms.

This produces strong gusty winds, heavy rain and thunderclouds – a tropical disorder. As air pressure drops and winds sustain at 38 mph or more, the commotion becomes a tropical despair, then a tropical storm, and finally a hurricane with continued winds of over 73 mph.

Lin hopes ultimately to be able to measure sea-level air pressure from aircraft flyovers and space-based satellites. The local coverage provide by flyovers, combined with a broad perspective from space, will provide enough information to appreciably improve the ability of forecasters to determine how intense a hurricane is and where it’s headed.