Space shuttle astronauts captured this close-up view of the well-developed eye of Typhoon Emilia in July 1994. Emilia was observed about 200 kilometers southeast of Hawai'i, and briefly threatened the islands before veering away. The eye is a fundamental part of a mature, well-organized hurricane. When the general circulation of a mature hurricane is set up, the most intense storms and most powerful winds form a cylindrical wall of clouds called the eye wall, which can be several tens of kilometers wide. Powerful updrafts in the eye wall pull air into the storm along the ocean surface. Rising air in the eye wall encounters the tropopause and spreads laterally. Some air flows downward into the center, heating and dissipating the clouds and forming the clear calm eye. Most of this rising air flows outward, however, forming a circular cloud deck over the hurricane called the cirroform anvil, seen here surrounding the eye.
65 images 65-92-14, 65-92-16.)