Tropical Cyclone Eloise spun across the Mozambique Channel in mid-January and is now poised to move inland over East African countries.
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this image of the cyclone at 12:50 p.m. local time in Mozambique (1050 Universal Time) on January 22, 2021. Around this time, the storm had maximum sustained winds of about 65 knots (75 miles/120 kilometers per hour)—equivalent to a category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.
According to news reports, Eloise has the potential to strengthen even more, leading to flooding and damage across areas that were devastated by Tropical Cyclone Idai in March 2019.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.
