KEY WEST, Florida — Before Hurricane Laura left a trail of destruction in Louisiana and Southeast Texas, she created a stunning natural phenomenon in Key West, Florida.
Lucky witnesses, including Jacob Emerick, spotted the circular current of water from the air on Thursday.
The National Weather Service says it’s called an eddy, which is a circular current of water.
It looks a little like the imprint of a small hurricane on top of the turquoise water.
“The swirling motion of eddies in the ocean cause nutrients that are normally found in colder, deeper waters to come to the surface," NOAA explains on their website. "Here, phytoplankton (tiny ocean plants) feeding on these nutrients color the water beautiful shades of blue and green."
Commercial helicopter pilot Brian Kasch also witnessed the beauty of mother nature on an aerial tour over Key West.
Laura was still a tropical storm when it passed near Key West and churned toward the Texas-Louisiana border.
“Significant eddies are assigned names similar to hurricanes,” according to noaa.gov. “The names follow chronologically along with the alphabet and are decided upon by staff at Horizon Marine.”
An eddy that formed in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010 was named Eddy Franklin after Ben Franklin, who was known to have done research on the Gulf Stream.
And that’s your weather lesson for the day.
