Explanation:
Why does a hurricane have an eye at its center?
No one is yet sure.
What happens in and around a hurricane's eye is well documented, though.
Warm air rises around the eye's edges, cools, swirls, and spreads out over the large
storm, sinking primarily at the far edges.
Inside the
low-pressure eye,
air also sinks and warms -- which causes
evaporation,
calm, and clearing -- sunlight might even stream through.
Just at the
eye's edge is a
towering eyewall, the area of the highest winds.
It is particularly dangerous to go outside when the
tranquil eye passes over because you are soon to experience,
again,
the storm's violent eyewall.
Featured is one of the most
dramatic
videos yet taken of an eye and rotating eyewall.
The time-lapse video was taken from space by NASA's
GOES-16 satellite
last week over one of the
most powerful tropical cyclones in recorded history:
Hurricane Irma.
Hurricanes can be
extremely dangerous and
their perils are notconfined to the storm's center.
