NASA Captures Tropical Hurricanes From Space

On September 15 the NASA satellite The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13 satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Karl and Hurricanes Igor and Julia.

At that time, Tropical Storm Karl (left) was making landfall in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Category 4 Hurricane Igor was spinning in the Atlantic Ocean (center) over 1000 miles southeast of Bermuda, and Category 4 Hurricane Julia trailing to Igor’s east (far right) about 600 miles west-northwest of the Cape Verde Islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.

NASA also captured an image of Hurricane Igor with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Terra satellite. The image depicts the massive hurricane three to four days away from Bermuda.

To get a grasp on the size of Hurricane Igor, the distance from one side of the storm to the other is the equivalent of travelling from Boston Massachusetts to Richmond Virginia, a total of 550 miles or a 10 hour drive.

Maximum sustained winds were nearing 145 miles per hour on the morning of the 15th and were strong enough that tropical-storm-force winds extend well away from the eye of the storm.

Courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Centre

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