Hurricane Harvey Stirs Up the Gulf of Mexico

Hurricane Harvey Stirs Up the Gulf of Mexico

When Hurricane Harvey blows ashore over coastal Texas on Friday night, it will likely be the first major hurricane (category 3 or stronger) to make landfall in the United States since 2005. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of the rapidly intensifying storm at 11:24 a.m. Central Daylight Time (16:45 Universal Time) on August 24, 2017.

The National Hurricane Center expects Harvey to be a category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale—with winds exceeding 110 miles (180 kilometers) per hour—when it makes landfall. It will likely produce a storm surge of 6 to 12 feet (2 to 4 meters) and drop between 15 and 25 inches (38 and 63 centimeters) of rain in some areas—enough to produce life-threatening flash floods.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Caption by Adam Voiland.

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