Category 5 hurricane Dean hits Yucatan peninsula
16 August 2007 00:00 UTC
A Cape Verde-type hurricane, Dean took a west-northwest path through the Caribbean Sea and passed just to the south of Jamaica on 20 August, making landfall in the Yucatan on 21 August 2007, and a second landfall near Tecolutla, Mexico, on 22 August.
04 May 2023
16 August 2007
By Jochen Kerkmann (EUMETSAT)
According to Wikipedia, Hurricane Dean was the fourth named storm, third tropical cyclone but the first major hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the most intense tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Basin since Hurricane Wilma of 2005, and the ninth most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. At least 42 deaths were reported and insured damage is estimated at about $1.9 billion (USD).
The images below show Hurricane Dean on 16 August 2007 when it was classified as a category 2 hurricane. The left image shows an AVHRR RGB composite where white areas indicate colder cloud tops and likely precipitation, but it is difficult to determine exactly where the precipitation is falling beneath these cloud tops and to determine the rain rate.
The image on the right shows, for approximately the same area, a Metop-A MHS (Microwave Humidity Sounder) band 2 (157GHz) image. In this image one can see right through the cirrus clouds to precipitation signatures caused by ice scattering. Indeed, in this image the blue and green colours show frozen precipitation particles aloft, which will later fall and become rain. Thus, while infrared sensors detect only cloud top temperatures, using the high-frequency scattering channels from MHS allows us to observe precipitation cell signatures directly and to derive more precise quantitative rain rates.
Additional content
Met-9 IR10.8 image showing tropical depression stage of Dean (13 Aug 03:00 UTC)
Met-9 HRV image showing tropical storm stage of Dean (15 Aug 19:00 UTC)
Met-9 Fog RGB image showing Dean over Lesser Antilles (17 Au. 07:00 UTC)
peninsula (20 Aug 15:18 UTC)
in Mexico (22 Aug 16:15 UTC)
Hurricane Dean in the Gulf of Mexico (CIMSS Blog)
Photo of hurricane Dean from International Space Station (Credit: NASA)
