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• September 5, 2008 (7.8 MB jpeg)
• September 6, 2008 (8.2 MB jpeg)

Tropical Storm Hanna did not reach hurricane strength before making landfall near the South Carolina–North Carolina state line in the pre-dawn hours of September 6, 2008, instead hovering just on the brink of minimal Category 1 hurricane status. When the National Hurricane Center issued their 2:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time advisory on September 6, Hanna was just about to make landfall, with sustained winds of 110 kilometers per hour (70 miles per hour.)

This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on NASA’s Aqua (September 5, left) and Terra satellites (September 6, right) shows how quickly the storm was moving in its final approach to the U.S. East Coast. On Friday afternoon (September 5), the eye of the storm was about 250 kilometers east of the Florida–Georgia state line. In just under a day, the weakening center of the storm was located west-northwest of Norfolk, Virginia, and Hampton Roads Harbor—more than 730 kilometers (more than 455 miles) north-northeast.

NASA images by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

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