Stan was a Category 1 hurricane as it came ashore on southern Mexico’s Gulf Coast. It carried with it the usual strong winds and rain associated with low-intensity hurricanes. Still, Mexican authories took the storm seriously, evacuating some Gulf oil platforms and shutting down facilities along the coastline around Veracruz, the nearest major city to the landfall area. Some evacuations along coastal towns were also ordered. The storm was blamed for 35 deaths in Central America as it crossed the Yucatan Peninsula, many as a result of landslides from the substantial rain that fell over several days. Mexico City, more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) away from the point of landfall, received rain from Stan’s outer cloud bands.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of Stan at 12:20 p.m. local time, several hours after it made landfall. At the time of this image, Stan was losing strength over land, but still had sustained winds of around 110 kilometers per hour (70 miles per hour), more than sufficient to cause widespread damage not only around the storm’s center, but for quite some distance away. Stan was projected to cross Mexico and enter the Pacific, but projections at the time of this image suggested that it would not re-form in the Pacific.
References & Resources
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team.
