I just saw a video from the ISS of hurricane Milton and the storm wasn’t spinning at all, not even I tiny bit near the eye.
In: Planetary Science
because its huge!
think of the earth, from space you cant see it spin, but the equator is moving 1000 mph.
even at the eye, wind speed is only 180mph, and while I couldnt find the exact number, the eye is larger than 40 miles in diameter. at that size and speed, if you watched it for an hour, you might see it rotate 1 or 2 times. 1 or 2 rotations per hour is so much slower than anything you can see moving
Same reason a plane in the sky looks like it’s moving really slowly, even though it isn’t. It’s so far away that its location in the sky isn’t changing much from moment to moment.
The fastest hurricane winds are 190mph, the eye of hurricane is up to 40 miles across. At that speed and diameter one rotation takes about 40 minutes.
It’s only a little bit faster than the minute hand on a clock, viewed from just over 6 feet away.
Because they are moving slowly. Especially compared to the speed of the stations orbit.
If you look at the bottom corner of the weather radar feeds loop, you see it’s about 60 minutes time for a ~10 sec loop.
Weather moves about 20-200mph
Airplanes between 200-2000mph
Space station orbit is about 25000mph
maybe clouds are just really chill up there. they’re like “why rush when you can just hang out” they’re too high up to care about speed
Latest Answers