| We're getting closer and closer to the main storm. This is Hurricane Hortense in September of 1984. We are about 190 miles southeast of Bermuda, and the people on that beautiful island are pretty worried, because they are right in the path of this storm (As it turned out, this was a very minor storm, and was an official hurricane for only a few hours. The Hurricane Center folks were probably being overly generous to us when they upgraded it from a tropical storm to a hurricane). In the lower part of the photo, you can see the typical "scud" clouds of a weak, unorganized storm. That anvil-shaped overhang at the top is unusual. You see them all the time in Midwestern thunderstorms, but rarely in tropical storms. Notice the mammatus clouds drooping down from the overhang - they're associated with a fairly mean thunderhead. We would be well advised to steer clear of that. There are some places even a Hurricane Hunter shouldn't go! |
