Hurricane Opal
September 27-October 6, 1995
Hurricane Opal made landfall near Pensacola Beach, Florida as
a marginal category 3 hurricane on October 4. Florida's immediate
coastal areas suffered extensive damage from the storm surge.
Estimates of the surge elevation ranged from 5-14 feet above mean
sea level. Rainfall totals generally ranged from 5-10 inches over
portions of the Florida panhandle, Alabama and Georgia. The greatest
rainfall totals of 8-9 inches, however, were recorded in the mountains
of North Carolina. The death toll from Opal was 59. Fortunately,
Opal had weakened from a category 4 storm at the time of landfall.
Opal may now be ranked higher than the fourth costliest
U.S. hurricane with $3 billion in damage.
Ocean Turbidity
Large changes in turbidity are evident in the after and
difference images. The highest turbidity is concentrated
to the right of the hurricane track in the area around Cape St.
George, Florida. This is likely due to stronger hurricane force winds in
this area as well as wave convergence properties of the capes
and points. Although not present in the images, the regions of
high turbidity are generally found inshore of the 200 meter shelf
break with the break being wider to the right of the hurricane
track than to the left. This suggests that the resuspended bottom
sediments compose a large part of the overall turbidity signal.
| Before | After | Difference (after minus before) |
Sea Surface Temperature
The after SST image depicts large areas of cooling especially
to the right of the hurricane track where the strongest winds
are expected. The difference image indicates that the changes
were as large as 8 °C. A cool area is also found just offshore
of the Mississippi Delta. The mechanism for this region wide cooling
is probably sea surface surface heat loss induced by the hurricane.
| Before | After | Difference (after minus before) |
For scientists more time series Satellite Images in GEOTIFF Format
are available
