Typhoon Longwang was a small but well-organized and powerful storm system when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image at 12:50 p.m. local time, on September 27, 2005. At the time of this MODIS observation, Longwang was 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, and well away from any significant land mass. It was travelling roughly westward towards the Chinese coast on a track that would take it through the southern fringe of the Japanese islands. Typhoon Longwang had sustained winds of 180 kilometers per hour (115 miles per hour) near the storm’s center, and it was projected to become significantly stronger in the following days.
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NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team.
