Hurricane rainbands are curved storm formations that form spiraling rings around a hurricane. They can be between 3 and 30 miles wide and up to 300 miles long. Typically, the closer a rainband is to the center of the hurricane, the bigger and stronger it is.
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Weather forecasters use Doppler radar to look inside hurricane rainbands and measure how heavy the rain is. The following image shows a cross section of a typical rainband, with liquid water amounts shown by the colored shading. The small inset image shows a radar view of a hurricane, with yellow semi-circles marking rainband arcs.
The heaviest rain falls in the center of a rainband. Some rainbands can drop up to 25 centimeters (10 inches) of rain per hour, which is enough to cause devastating floods when it falls over land.
