Hurricane Opal was the second of two hurricanes which came ashore near Pensacola in 1995. The storm developed over the Yucatan Peninsula, and 5 days later made landfall just east of Pensacola.

Instead of providing basic information about hurricanes, which can be found throughout the Internet, I will refer you to NOAA's and Dr. Landsea's (yup, this is a real name) FAQ about hurricanes. It is one of the most complete FAQs found anywhere concerning these storms. 

Florida is no stranger to hurricanes and has received its share of them over the past century. Most people don't realize that Pensacola was the first permanent European settlement in the United States. Founded in 1559, it was blown away a few months later when a hurricane roared through. It wasn't until 130 years later, in 1689, that the city was re-established.

Florida's highest elevation point is only 345 ft and is located in Walton County, in the Panhandle. With such low elevations and most of the population living along the coast, it is easy to understand why hurricanes are so destructive. The destructiveness of these hurricanes on Florida is tremendous as can be seen by these images / images.

To give you a better idea on how hurricanes can affect the habitat and areas in which they impact, we will take a tour of Hurricane Opal and use publicly available information and images to learn about this storm. The listed activities listed below will introduce you to the use of various image processing techniques which can be used to study this storm. Although one can learn about the storm by beginning at any of the below listed links, the ideal link to begin this study is "Tracking the Storm."

Eye of the Storm