Now a powerful and rare Category 5 storm, Hurricane Ivan is moving between Cuba, right, and the Yucatan Peninsula, left into the Gulf of Mexico. When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image at 15:55 UTC (10:55 a.m. EDT) on September 13, 2004, the storm boasted winds of 260 kilometers per hour (160 mph). The storm was located about 110 kilometers southeast of Cuba, and was moving northwest at 13 kilometers per hour (8 mph). For more information about Ivan, please visit the National Hurricane Center.
Ivan appears to have grown in size over the last 24 hours. Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 185 km (115 miles) from the storm’s center, with tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 354 km (220 miles). Hurricane Ivan is predicted to brush the western tip of Cuba and proceed on a more northward path toward the Florida-Alabama border on the U.S. Gulf Coast, where the storm is currently predicted to make landfall by the evening of September 15.
The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image in additional resolutions and formats. For more recent NASA images of Hurricane Ivan, please visit the Earth Observatory’s Natural Hazards section.
NASA image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team at Goddard Space Flight Center
