Tropical Cyclone Kate swirls in the Torres Strait between Australia’s Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea in this satellite view of the storm, obtained by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite on February 23, 2006. Kate was the second tropical cyclone in 2006 to form off the coast of Queensland. It was not a particularly powerful system when MODIS obtained this view, with peak winds around 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour). However, because it was located so far offshore, there was little observed data from ground stations and radar instruments, which was making predictions of the storm’s path and future intensity a challenge, according to the Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre.
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NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team.
