Richard formed as a tropical depression in the northwestern Caribbean Sea on October 20 and strengthened into a tropical storm the next day. The storm intensified into a hurricane on October 24, just before making landfall along the coast of Belize. At 10:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time (CDT) on October 24, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that the storm was located about 95 miles (155 kilometers) east-southeast of Belize City, and had winds of 85 miles (140 kilometers) per hour.
At 11:45 a.m. CDT (16:45 UTC) on October 24, 2010, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of Richard making landfall along the Belize coast. Storm clouds overlap Belize in the west and Honduras in the south. In the northwest, clouds narrowly miss the Yucatán Peninsula.
The day after making landfall, Richard weakened to a tropical depression, the NHC reported. As of 10:00 a.m. CDT on October 25, the storm’s winds were 35 miles (55 kilometers) per hour, and no coastal watches or warnings remained in effect.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.
