NASA Modis Image Of Hurricane Frances As She Approached The Florida Coast
See also earlier image - Scoop Images: Hurricane Frances Brushes Florida
Florida braced itself for another 24 hours of damaging winds and torrential rains last night after Hurricane Frances
very slowly moved over the hurricane prone State.
After the first nine hours of battering from the now Category 2 hurricane it was clear that there was still a great deal
more to come. The latest forecast track from the NOAA National Hurricane Center (see below) indicates the monster storm
will not move out into the Gulf of Mexico till early Sunday morning EST (Monday 9am NZT), and even then it will continue
to bring heavy rain to Florida's panhandle for another 24 hours.
Frances is then expected to move into Alabama and Georgia where she will likely continue to wreak chaos with torrential
rain over a large swathe of the west of the State for a further 24 hours. (Click here to view a NOAA GFS supercomputer rainfall animation showing rainfall forecasts for the next 180hrs – 1.3meg
download)
The Latest Forecast Track - At Midnight Sunday NZT
Click for big version
At the height of the storm Frances brought sustained 170kmh winds to huge swathes of central and South Florida. But the
worst damage is expected to be caused by flooding.
The image below is a weather radar image from about 10 hours after hurricane force winds first struck Palm Beach. It
shows heavy rain over most of South and Central Florida. This rain, up to 20 inches (450mm) is expected in the worst hit
spots, is expected to bring widespread flooding. Inland flooding in turn is historically the largest cause of loss of
life in Hurricane events.
Click image to view archived radar image at the height of the storm last night
For breaking live news on Hurricane Frances - thought to be the worst to strike Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992(which smashed several airforce bases, did USD$26.5 billion in damage, killed 23 people and earned itself the title of
the "most destructive US hurricane of record") - click on the links below, or search Google News.
NEWS LINKS:
(Scoop coverage continuing...)