Watched this
fantastic program on Discovery Science channel last night re thunderstorms and hurricanes. The National Hurricane Centre are using a 'virtual reality' 3D hologram type image that is used in conjunction with the 'viewer' wearing 3D glasses and a glove that is connected to a computer program.
The visual display of a hurricane - whether current or not can be displayed and the hurricane is displayed in infra red much like radar signatures we see but in 3D and also rotates and is directly downloaded from their site if a hurricane is present.
Now what was fascinating about all this is that the viewer can manipulate the visual by using the glove to either speed up winds in all levels, add thunderstorms to the system, change wind direction, take out wind at any level, add more precip, change the temp of the ocean and add or delete just about anything associated with the formation of the hurricane.
All this enables the forcasters to virtually predict the hurricane's path by manipulating the display and gives the forcasters the ability to play 'God' with the system - whereever or whenever they've downloaded the data. It was amazing to watch this 3D display actually rotate in front of him and see him add wind, cloud, take out thunderstorms etc to the system to see what it would do.
He simply sticks his hand 'into' the display and plucks out an inflow band at any level and the computer then adjusts the storm to suit! They can virtually start out with a depression and turn it into either a Cat 1 or 5 system simply by the touch of a hand.
This gives the forcasters a much, much better chance of seeing where the storm is going to track given the conditions at the time and by either increasing or decreasing its severity they can see what the storm will do and where it will go. They were using Hurricane Mitch as their model and it was just simply amazing to watch - if you've got Fox or Austar i would recommend keeping an 'eye' out for it (pun definately intended).
The show also covered lightning, tornado formation, supercells and thunderstorms. Very, very informative.
A must see. ***** stars!
Mike
