Not to overwhelm you with pictures of weather from space, but this is too amazing to pass up: 8000 km to the southeast of that Italian snowstorm, a different storm is slamming into Madagascar. Tropical cyclone Giovanna made landfall on the east coast of the island at 06:30 GMT Monday morning.
This picture — click to encyclonate — again taken by the ESA’s Envisat, shows just how big this storm is, about 1500 km from north to south, the size of Madagascar itself. What I said about the picture of snow in Italy goes double here: the violence of this storm is transformed into terrible beauty when viewed from above. I’ll note that the satellite’s orbital height is about 800 km, a bit over half the width of the storm it’s observing.
Image credit: ESA
Related posts:
- Attack of the Cyclones
- Landfall
- Hurricane Irene from start to finish
- Hurricane double whammy
February 16th, 2012 at 11:00 am
Looks like it’s hitting the eastern coast or am I missing something?
February 16th, 2012 at 11:09 am
I guess this emphasizes the reversal of seasons between north/south hemisphere: north is in late winter, south in late summer, which indeed is typhoon season.
I showed students a newspaper article dated August, 2011 that reported a huge snowstorm , rare one, in New Zealand so that was winter then. the good lord makes it complicated but interesting at the same time.
February 16th, 2012 at 11:45 am
According to my map Giovanna seems to be on the East coast of Madagascar. Am I missing something?
February 16th, 2012 at 11:57 am
#2- that was my impression. I guess in Indian Ocean the typhoons move from east to west, just like the big ones like Andrew here in south Fla. did move from cape verde to usa. If trade winds are the guiding force moving hurricanes, and I think they are a part of the story, that explains it because all trade winds in tropics are easterly winds.
February 16th, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Giovanna is to the east of Madagascar.
Tropical cyclones in the tropics are typically most strongly influenced by the trade winds, and thus usually move east to west (though other behaviors do occur, especially near Australia, where TCs are most erratic). However, they tend to drift away from the tropics, especially if they strong, and the further away from the tropics they drift, the more likely they are to be picked up by a large mid-latitude system, and recurve, turning poleward, and then off to the northeast if in the northern hemisphere, or off to the southeast if in the southern hemisphere. This is behavior is especially common in the North Atlantic. Recurvature in the South Indian ocean is rare.
These problems started shortly after I asked to have the IP of my desktop box moved.
February 16th, 2012 at 4:12 pm
What’s scarier are the very obvious signs of rampant deforestation on the island. I’m willing to bet all those light tan areas used to be green not that many years ago.
February 16th, 2012 at 5:04 pm
D’oh! The storm is moving west, and I typed that instead of east. when referring to the island’s coast. I fixed it.
February 16th, 2012 at 5:18 pm
poor lemurs and teeny chameleons
I hope man and beast make it through with minimal casualties.
February 16th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Has the President of Madagascar responded yet?
February 16th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
I hope they shut down everything
February 16th, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Gee, just think, if it wasn’t for humans, there’d be no one to lament the passing of critters devastated by these storms,,,
I like to make these points on other sites(it would be superfluous on this one) that though humans are aggressive(but not as aggressive as baboons), acquisitive( but probably not as acquisitive as your average crow. They’ll steal anything), and greedy(probably on par with other critters. Resources matter, especially in reproduction), we also feel compassion for others less enabled. I think that says a lot for humanities potential ( I guess the Little Gray Fellas were right).
Gary 7
February 16th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
kuhnigget, that was my though as well, although I believe that the deforestation has been a problem for decades.
February 17th, 2012 at 9:21 am
I notice the sea seems a different color to the south. Is that an effect of the storm, or is it just a factor of depth or normal currents?
February 17th, 2012 at 11:35 pm
@12. Autumn :
Yep. Saw a great doco with David Attenborough a month or two ago – ‘Attenborough and the Giant Egg’ click my name for youtube trailer – and apparently Madagascar has changed quite dramatically even over a few decades – as has Attenborough himself!
Wikipedia’s Madagascar page states that :
Ninety percent natural forest lost?! Yikes!
@11. Gary Ansorge – February 16th, 2012 at 6:16 pm :
I dunno ’bout that. Elephants certainly mourn their dead. Wonder if lemurs do as well?
Trivia : Apparently ring tailed lemurs purr like cats.
Source : Sunday Mail newspaper many weeks ago – didn’t record date or page number, sorry – in one of the lift out sections.
February 20th, 2012 at 4:07 pm
14. Messier Tidy Upper
But there are very few elephants reading this blog, so I contend they’re not likely to mourn something they can’t see or know about,,,
Gary 7
February 21st, 2012 at 5:48 am
At first I thought this picture had something wrong with it…it took my brain a second or two to reconcile the clockwise motion of the storm with the fact that it’s in the southern hemisphere. I’m so used to seeing counterclockwise hurricanes that anything else doesn’t look real.