HURRICANES can wreak havoc by creating a storm surge – a huge wall of water that slams ashore. Now instruments fortuitously placed in the path of hurricane Ivan have given invaluable information that could help predict the surges.
To understand how winds transfer their energy to the water to cause the surges, oceanographers usually try to measure wind speeds above the ocean surface, but large waves make this difficult. “We’d really prefer to measure ocean current speeds directly under hurricanes,” says William Teague of NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Hancock county, Mississippi. “But you can’t tell where in the sea to…
