Homework 2

Meteorology 302
Spring 2004

Name _____________________________________

Homework 2: Hurricane Mitch

Section 1: Distributed Officially Monday March 29
Due Monday April 5

Section 4: Distributed Officially Tuesday March 30
Due Tuesday April 6

Answer all questions in complete sentences ON THE BACK OR ON SEPARATE SHEETS OF PAPER.
Questions which require a "yes" or "no" answer should also have an explanatory sentence explaining reasoning.
Many of the questions below simply have you OBSERVE something. Yet you still need to put your observation in the context of a complete sentence.

Note: There are four parts to the homework, each with a short set of one or more questions underneath the images you are asked to examine.

Part 1. Hurricane Mitch, October 26, 1998 Visible Imagery

Animation of Visible Imagery of Hurricane Mitch, 26 October 1998

Questions: In answering the following questions, use "Animation of Visible Imagery" above.

Describe the general trajectory (motion of the storm itself) of Hurricane Mitch.
Describe the sense of the cloud motion relative to the center of Mitch?

Part 2. Hurricane Mitch, October 26, 1998 Infrared Imagery

Animation of Infrared Imagery of Hurricane Mitch, 26 October 1998

Questions: In answering the following questions, use "Animation of Infrared Imagery" above.

Describe motion of the clouds relative to Mitch's center.
In general, where are the coldest cloud tops located, relative to the center of Mitch?
Where would you think that the heaviest precipitation would be occurring with respect to the center of the storm? Explain using concepts we have discussed in class.

Part 3. Hurricane Tracks

Examine the tropical cyclone tracks (given below) for the Pacific and the Atlantic for the year 2000. Also examine the sea-surface temperature analysis given at the bottom of this web page.

Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Tracks 2002

Pacific Tropical Cyclone Tracks 2002

Sea Surface Temperature Analysis (C) as of 11 September 2003

Questions

Hurricane Mitch occurred in 1998. Yet, if Mitch was a typical hurricane, its motion should generally correspond to that which occurs in any given year. The questions below ask you to relate the path (or track) of Mitch to the general track of hurricanes/tropical storms in a different year, 2002. (1998, 2002 and 2003 were/are relatively normal years for both tracks of storms and the sea-surface temperature pattern. Thus, you can consider the tropical cyclone paths for 2002, and the SST patterns for 2003 comparable to those in 1998).

Does the trajectory you inferred for Hurricane Mitch (from previous questions) correspond to the general track of the year 2002 storms as shown in the images above?
Describe the apparent relationship between tropical cyclone tracks and the sea-surface temperature pattern depicted above?

Part 4. Synthesis

Here is the definition of "Tropical Cyclone":

Generic term for a "severe" nonfrontal synoptic-scale cyclone orginating over tropical or subtropical waters with organized convection and definite cyclonic surface wind circulation, often observable in cloud motions and features. In early stages, tropical cyclones move from east to west in the broad zone of the prevailing easterlies.

Describe how the observations you made in the previous questions suggest that Mitch fits this definition.

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