Tropical Depression Twelve strengthened into Tropical Storm Leslie on August 30, 2012. On September 5, Leslie became the sixth Atlantic hurricane of the 2012 season, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC).
At 1:15 p.m. Atlantic Standard Time on September 5—about the same time that the NHC announced that Leslie had become a hurricane—the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image. Spanning hundreds of kilometers, Leslie had a spiral shape and clear eye characteristic of strong storms.
The following day, the NHC reported that Leslie remained a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour. Located roughly 430 miles (695 kilometers) south-southeast of Bermuda, the storm was moving northward at just 2 miles (3 kilometers) per hour. Meanwhile, CNN reported that officials in Bermuda warned residents to take precautions for the storm’s anticipated arrival over the weekend.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
