Tropical Storm Beryl formed in the northwestern Atlantic on July 18, 2006, roughly 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The tropical depression gradually gathered just enough power to reach storm status and become the second named storm system of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. As of July 20, it had gained only slightly more strength and was headed north towards New York City. Forecasts at the time predicted that the storm would continue to travel north, but then curve away to the east before getting close to land. The storm was also not expected to become strong enough to be classified as a hurricane.
This photo-like image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite on July 19, 2006, at 11:15 a.m. local time (15:15 UTC). The storm had a very basic swirling shape embedded within a larger train of clouds stretching northeast. These clouds are associated with a cold front over the Atlantic Ocean. Sustained winds in the storm system were estimated to be around 95 kilometers per hour (60 miles per hour) around the time the image was captured, according to the University of Hawaii’s Tropical Storm Information Center.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC.