MISR Captures Hurricane Michael Near Florida Panhandle

MISR carries nine cameras fixed at different angles, each of which viewed Michael over the course of approximately seven minutes when it was just off Florida's west coast on Tuesday, October 9.

Images from the nine views are used to calculate the height of the cloud tops, and the motion of the clouds between the views provides information on wind speed and direction. This composite image shows the view from the central, downward-pointing camera (left), the calculated cloud-top heights (middle), and wind velocity vectors (right) superimposed on the image. The length of the arrows is proportional to wind speed and the colors show the altitude of the cloud tops in kilometers.

The National Hurricane Center clocked Michael's sustained wind speed at 150 mph (240 kph) just before noon local time on Wednesday. It is expected to bring strong winds, storm surge and heavy rain to much of the southeast.

MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The instrument flies aboard the Terra satellite, which is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The MISR data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center in Hampton, Virginia. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

More information about MISR is available at https://misr.jpl.nasa.gov/.