Tropical Depression Thirteen formed on September 3, 2012, strengthened into Tropical Storm Michael on September 4, and strengthened further into Hurricane Michael on September 5—the seventh Atlantic hurricane of the 2012 season. On September 7, 2012, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that Michael packed maximum sustained winds of 105 miles (165 kilometers) per hour. The storm was located about 930 miles (1,495 kilometers) west-southwest of the Azores.
On September 7, 2012, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of Hurricane Michael over the Atlantic Ocean. About the time that MODIS acquired this image, the NHC reported that the storm was moving toward the northwest at roughly 3 miles (6 kilometers) per hour. Storm track projections showed Michael continuing northward past the island of Newfoundland within the next several days.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
