Weather Geek Out: Time Lapse Satellite View Of Hurricane Season

This isn't an image from the video at the bottom of this post, but you get the
idea. The ebb and flow of Atlantic hurricanes is a sight to behold.

NOAA recently put out a time lapse satellite view of the Atlantic Ocean in which you can watch the progress of all the tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin during 2018.

That's the point of the video, anyway.

But it's mesmerizing to watch the flow of clouds across much of North America, the Atlantic and extreme western Europe. The air really acts like a fluid.

A time stamp in the upper right hand corner tells you what time of year you're in. Early in the video, clusters of thunderstorms keep popping up in the Plains, like premature Fourth of July fireworks. That's typical of that time of year.

The hurricane season got off to a slow start. You can see why. A milky haze is seen coming off the west coast of Africa in July. That's dust from the Sahara Desert, which helps suppress tropical storms.

At roughly the same time, you see a conveyor belt of clouds repeated moving northward along the United States East Coast, contributing to a record wet year in the Mid-Atlantic states

Later, when the Sahara dust diminishes,  you see Hurricane Florence making its long journey across the Atlantic Ocean toward North Carolina. You see how Florence moved in fits and starts, organizing, weakening, starting to head north, then changing its mind and beelining toward North Carolina.

Powerful hurricane Michael looks almost like an afterthought on satellite. It was a terribly powerful, destructive storm, but in the grand scheme of things, didn't have a particularly long life. At the same time that Michael was raising havoc, Leslie in the central Atlantic danced and swirled around aimlessly seemingly endlessly looping around out there before finally giving up the ghost and heading toward Portugal.

Even if you're not into weather like I am, the video is worth watching. In a stressful time of year, the ebb and flow of the clouds in the video is soothing. Which is ironic, since hurricanes are anything but soothing.

So here's the video. Enjoy!