Hurricane Frances

The MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of Tropical Storm Frances on September 6, 2004 at 19:00 UTC (3:00 PM EDT). At the time this image was taken Frances had just made landfall 30 miles south of Tallahassee, Florida and was dumping copious amounts of rainfall in the panhandle region of Florida. Maximum sustained winds were near 65 mph and the storm was moving towards the north-northwest at 8 mph.
The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions and formats.

Hurricane Frances was the second most intense tropical cyclone in the Atlantic during 2004 and proved to be very destructive in Florida. It was the sixth named storm, the fourth hurricane, and the third major hurricane of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season. The system crossed the open Atlantic in late August, moving to the north of the Lesser Antilles while strengthening. Its outer bands struck Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands while passing north of the Caribbean Sea. The storm’s maximum sustained wind peaked at 145 mph (233 km/h), achieving Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. As the system’s forward motion slowed, the eye passed over San Salvador Island and very close to Cat Island in the Bahamas. Frances was the first hurricane to impact the entire Bahamian archipelago since 1928 and almost completely destroyed their agricultural economy.

Credit: NASA image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.