Rita

2005-09-22 12:00 -- 2005-09-24 12:00 (uncorrected animation)

Disclaimer: It was brought to our attention that this original animation of Hurricane Rita showed an anomalous red patch (often referred to as the "red fingers") to the west of the storm around the posted time of 09/23/05 1315 UTC. We have examined the original source of the data and established that this feature is the artifact of a transmission error in the DMSP-13 satellite (several brightness temperature values are negative, for example) that was extrapolated across a data gap in the imagery. The feature appeared to last for several hours because the algorithm that generates this data works by blending entire images - including their bad data - into one another over the span of several hours.

The original image that the MIMIC product interpolated into the "red fingers" artifact can be viewed here.