At 20:25 Universal Time (10:25 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time) on August 8, 2015, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of Hurricane Hilda tracking west toward the Hawaiian islands. At the time of this image, Hilda had moved from the Eastern Pacific into the Central Pacific, and was located about 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) southeast of Hawaii (not pictured). According to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, maximum sustained winds measured about 220 kilometers per hour (140 miles per hour); wind gusts were estimated to have reached 270 kilometers per hour (170 miles per hour).
Forecasters expect the storm to weaken to a tropical depression by the time it reaches the Big Island of Hawaii later in the week.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.
