ISS017-E-015708 (9 Sept. 2008) --- Hurricane Ike covers more than half of Cuba in this image, photographed by the crew of ISS-17 aboard the International Space Station from a vantage point of 220 statute miles above Earth. The center of Ike was near 22.4 degrees north latitude and 82.4 degrees west longitude and moving 290 degrees at 11.7 miles per hour . Sustained winds were at 80.6 miles per hour, with gusts to 97.9 miles per hour and were forecast to strengthen as the eye moved back over the warm water in the gulf of Mexico.
ISS017-E-015752 (10 Sept. 2008) --- This picture of Hurricane Ike from earlier today was downlinked by the crew of the International Space Station, flying 220 statute miles above Earth. The center of the hurricane was near 23.8 degrees north latitude and 85.3 degrees west longitude, moving 300 degrees at 7 nautical miles per hour. The sustained winds were 80 nautical miles per hour with gusts to 100 nautical miles per hour and forecast to intensify.
NOAA satellite image of Hurricane Katrina taken on Aug. 28, 2005, at 11:45 a.m. EDT, as the powerful storm churned in the Gulf of Mexico as a Category Five storm with sustained winds near 175 mph, a day before the storm made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast
Roughly an hour before this image was captured at 1:50 p.m. Central Daylight Time on September 10, 2008, Ike was a Category 2 hurricane according to the National Hurricane Center. Ike was a large storm, and at the time of this image it was affecting three nations: Cuba, the United States, and Mexico.
Ike was a Category 4 storm before its passage over Cuba stripped it of some of its power. It re-emerged in the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 1 storm and re-strengthened. As of September 11, forecasters were warning that Ike might reach Category 3 strength in the warm waters of the Gulf prior to its projected landfall on the central Texas coastline.
In a single day, Ike transformed from a tropical storm into a powerful Category 4 hurricane. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image at 10:40 a.m. EDT on September 4, 2008. Ike was a densely packed mass of clouds with a distinct eye. As is typical in powerful cyclones, the storm is nearly symmetrical. At the time this image was acquired, Ike was northeast of the Lesser Antilles (visible in the large image) and had winds near 220 kilometers per hour (140 miles per hour) with stronger gusts, said the National Hurricane Center. Ike was forecast to weaken only slightly as it tracked west across the Atlantic.
