Images & Animations
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Credit
Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
Ophelia spent much of its life as a tropical cyclone meandering off of the southeast coast of the United States. The storm system, which began as a depression over the Bahamas on September 6, 2005, twice stalled out and made loops: once just east of Cape Canveral, Florida, and the other farther out to sea east of Georgia. Ophelia also flip-flopped several times between a strong tropical storm and a weak Category 1 hurricane. Despite its very slow movement, which usually leads to weakening due to upwelling of cooler water, Ophelia has maintained itself as a result of warm waters and its proximity to the Gulf Stream.
The hurricane was grazing along the North Carolina coastline without making landfall when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image at 2:20 p.m. Eastern time on September 15, 2005. At the time, Ophelia had winds of 120 kilometers per hour (75 miles per hour), putting it at tropical storm status. The slow-moving storm had been forecasted to dump heavy rain on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but proved less destructive than feared.
Metadata
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Sensor
Aqua/MODIS -
Visualization Date
2005-09-15
