Hurricane Wilma had just crossed Florida when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on October 24, 2005, at 2:25 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The storm made landfall eight hours earlier, at about 6:30 a.m., near Naples, Florida. At the time, Wilma was a strong Category 3 storm with winds gusting to 200 kilometers per hour (125 miles per hour). The storm weakened as it crossed Florida, but regained strength as it re-emerged over the Atlantic. By the time this image was taken, Wilma was back up to Category 3 status with winds of 185 km/hr (115 mph) and gusts to 210 km/hr (130 mph). Early news reports say that Wilma has brought widespread coastal flooding and wind damage to southern Florida.
The large image provided above has a resolution of 250 meters per pixel, MODIS’ maximum resolution. The image is available in additional resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response Team.
References & Resources
NASA image acquired by direct broadcast and processed by Liam Gumley at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
