Hurricane Emily was spinning through the Caribbean south of Jamacia on July 16, 2005, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image at 15:45 UTC (11:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time). At this time, Emily was a well-developed hurricane with winds over 230 kilometers an hour (125 knots) and gusts as high as 285 km/hr (155 knots).
As shown in this satellite image, the storm is passing roughly east to west well south of Jamaica (around 160 kilometers, or 100 miles), but the heavy rains in the storm’s outer bands fell on an already sodden island still recovering from Hurricane Dennis, which similarly glanced the island on July 7. Emily’s rains caused flooding, which has resulted in four deaths on the island. Tourists in the Yucatan Peninsula are being evacuated from resort areas and beaches as the hurricane continues on track to make landfall there during the morning of July 18, 2005.
NASA image provided courtesy of Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response team.
