Just two weeks after being soaked by flooding rain from Tropical Storm Ana, citizens of Madagascar braced for the arrival of another potent cyclone. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite acquired this natural-color image of Cyclone Batsirai on February 2, 2022.
Around the time this image was acquired, Batsirai had sustained winds of 235 kilometers (145 miles) per hour. Forecasts from the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest the cyclone is likely to make landfall in Madagascar late on February 4.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.
