Hurricane Rick was a Category 5 storm on October 18, 2009, near the time when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image. Several hundred kilometers southwest of Baja California, the storm had winds of 160 miles per hour (260 kilometers per hour), down from an estimated 180 mph (290 km/h) the previous evening at 8:00 p.m. As of 8:00 a.m. PDT on October 19, Rick was predicted to move in a northeastward arc, perhaps grazing Cabo San Lucas on the tip of the peninsula before making landfall as a weakened storm in Mexico between Wednesday and Thursday.

• References

• National Hurricane Center. (2009, October 19). Hurricane Rick: Coastal Watches/Warnings and 3-Day Track Forecast Cone. Accessed October 19, 2009.
• National Hurricane Center. (2009, October 18). Hurricane Rick Advisory Number 14…Corrected. Accessed October 19, 2009.

More images of this event in Natural Hazards

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey, NASA Earth Observatory.

Instrument: 

Terra - MODIS