Three Oceans, No Cyclones
September 8, 2013, was an unusual day in an unusual season for tropical cyclones.
This image of the Earth shows us
that we live on a dynamic, restless planet. On any given day, there is usually
a cyclone, tropical depression, or extra-tropical storm brewing somewhere on
the Earth. But for a brief moment this week, the skies over all of the oceans were relatively calm.
This image is a composite of fourteen polar
satellite passes, or swaths, stitched together from September 8, 2013. The
natural-color images were acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer
Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP)
satellite.
At the time of those near-midday passes, there were
no hurricanes, cyclones, or tropical storms in the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian
Ocean basins—a relatively rare occurrence at the height of the
hurricane/cyclone season in the northern hemisphere. There was plenty of cloud
cover, of course, and smaller storm systems. In the eastern Pacific, remnants
of tropical storm Lorena were breaking up near the Baja Peninsula.
In the eastern Atlantic, the pieces of tropical depression #9 were starting to
gather near the islands of Cape
Verde; by the next day, tropical storm
Humberto would form.
Image credit: NASA/NOAA/Suomi NPP/VIIRS
