What is the structure of a Tropical Cyclone?
A fully developed tropical cyclone has a central cloud free region of calm winds, known as the eye of the cyclone with diameter varying from 10 to 50 km. Surrounding the eye is the wall cloud region characterised by very strong winds and torrential rains, which has the width of about 10 to 150 km. The winds over this region rotate around the centre and resemble the coils of a snake. Wind speed fall off gradually away from this core region, which terminate over areas of weaker winds with overcast skies and occasional squall .There may be one or more spiral branch in a cyclone where higher rainfall occurs. The vertical extent of the cyclone is about 15 km. The INSAT imagery of Orissa Super cyclone on 29th October, 1999 is shown in the figure below.
