+ Full-Sized Image
Hurricane Dolly intensified to a Category 2 storm in the Gulf of Mexico on July 23, 2008, just before it bore down on South Padre Island off the South Texas coast. At its strongest, the storm’s winds reached sustained speeds of 100 miles per hour, with higher gusts. As of the 2:00 p.m. (Central Daylight Time) advisory from the National Hurricane Center, Dolly had weakened to a Category 1 storm because it had moved partly over land and no longer was being fueled by the warm ocean underneath; winds were about 95 miles per hour.
This natural-color image of Hurricane Dolly was captured at 2:50 p.m. local time (19:50 UTC) by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center MODIS Direct Broadcast facility. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
