26 October 1998 -- GOES-8 Visible
Hurricane Mitch Over the Caribbean Sea

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This loop of GOES-8 visible imagery shows the well-defined eye of Hurricane Mitch as it moved slowly northwestward across the Caribbean Sea (off the coast of Honduras) on 26 October 1998. Surface reports are also plotted on the images (A loop of magnified GOES-8 visible images can be found here).

Note that the low-level clouds within the eye appear to be rotating anticyclonically -- this is a "strobe effect" illusion created by 30-minute sampling of features that are rotating and evolving very quickly. In a similar loop of rapid-scan visible images at 5-10 minute intervals, the low-level clouds can be seen to be wrapping cyclonically within the eye.

Back to the 26 October 1998 Hurricane Mitch page