Typhoon Talim was a building storm in the western Pacific several hundred kilometers south of Japan when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on August 29, 2005. At this time, 1:25 p.m. Tokyo time, it had sustained winds of around 180 kilometers an hour (115 miles per hour) and was heading towards Taiwan at around 15 miles per hour. As of August 30, was being predicted to continue to gather up stronger winds and to strike Taiwan on September 2, and then continue across the Taiwan Strait to make landfall again on mainland China perhaps a day later. The typhoon should reach Category 4 strength, making it another super typhoon, by the time it strikes Taiwan, but should be a weaker Category 1 regular typhoon when it comes ashore on the mainland.
The large image provided above has a spatial resolution of 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides the image in additional resolutions, including MODIS’ maximum resolution of 250 meters per pixel.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC
