Reinforcing steel rods stretch for 45 miles. A steel catwalk runs across the center's roof, which houses what looks to drivers along Florida's turnpike like a forest of satellite dishes and high-powered antennae. Like a control tower to watch the traffic of storms at sea, the center's activity revolves around an octagon-shaped table. They contain updates on everything from ham radio reports to reconnaissance from aircraft to output from various computer models trying to predict the storm's path. A bank of computer workstations circles the desk.
Monitors glow with satellite pictures of the storm taken every half hour from space.
Other screens display complex observations made by planes that fly directly into the storm, as well as from probes that are dropped high above the hurricane. They transmit weather data as they float seaward on a descent that can take 25 minutes. Sixty of the probes, called dropsondes, have been used to gather Bonnie data, compared to 30 in a more typical case. Last year, NOAA also begin flying a Gulfstream jet over thousands of square miles of ocean around storms to collect data on the winds steering them. But Bonnie has been confounding forecasters' best efforts despite their array of gee-whiz technology.