Hurricane Floyd - September 13, 1999
New procedures for requesting super rapid scan operations (SRSO) or one minute imagery from the NOAA geostationary operational environmental satellites in 1999 allowed for requests for data on consecutive days. This produced a very detailed and unprecedented satellite dataset of Hurricane Floyd. Eight days consecutive of two hours or more of SRSO data were collected for Floyd, covering its development from tropical storm to intense hurricane (8 September - 15 September).
Hurricane Floyd acheived its maximum intensity at 12 UTC on 13 September when it was located at 23.6 N, 71.4 W. At this time its maximum sustained winds were 135 knots and its minimum sea level pressure was 921 hPa. Shortly after this time at 1255 UTC the GOES-8 Satellite began SRSO which produces 2 bursts an hour of 1-minute interval imagery, 8 minutes in duration. The satellite stayed in SRSO for the next 3 hours ending at 1542 UTC, producing 5 periods of 1-minute imagery. At this time Floyd had begun to fill but very slowly with central pressures rising to 923 hPa and winds dropping to 125 knots by 18 UTC, where it was located at 24.1 N and 72.9 W.
This is a SRSO (1 minute interval imaging) data set, covering 11 1/2 hours from 10:15 thru 21:55 UTC.
These digital, McIDAS format data files are available by anonymous FTP to: canopus.cira.colostate.edu. They are in directory /99256_floyd. The 5-channel, one-minute sector files are named with the conventional McIDAS "AREAnnnn" format (Approx 1.1 GB).
- nnnn=1000's for GOES Imager channel 1 (1 km)
- nnnn=2000's for channel 2 (4 km)
- nnnn=3000's for channel 3 (8 km)
- nnnn=4000's for channel 4 (4 km)
- nnnn=5000's for channel 5 (4 km)
Also available are a collection of ZIP files for faster download (Approx 530MB).
Channel 1 is visible, channel 2 is at 3.7 micrometers, channel 3 is at 6.7 micrometers (water vapor), channel 4 is at 10.2 micrometers (conventional IR window), and channel 5 is at 11.5 micrometers.
