Hurricane Hilary
GOES-15 0.63 µm visible channel images (click image to play animation)
GOES-15 0.63 µm visible channel images (above; click image to play animation) showed the rather small but very distinct eye of Category 4 Hurricane Hilary in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean on 23 September 2011. GOES-15 (the newest in the series of GOES N/O/P satellites, launched and tested in 2010) is scheduled to replace GOES-11 as the operational GOES-West satellite in December 2011.
During this same time period on 23 September, the GOES-11 satellite was placed into Super Rapid Scan Operations (SRSO) mode, providing bursts of data at 1-minute intervals. Magnified versions of GOES-11 0.65 µm visible channel images (below; click image to play animation; also available as a QuickTime movie) revealed that at times there were multiple mesovortices within the eye of Hurricane Hilary. Larger-scale (zoomed-out) views of GOES-11 SRSO Water Vapor, Visible, and IR channel images are available from CIRA/RAMMB.
GOES-11 0.65 µm visible channel SRSO images (click image to play animation)