NASA Video of Hurricane Bill

By Nancy Atkinson - August 20, 2009 at 3:52 PM UTC | Planetary Science
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This just in -- the NASA/NOAA satellite GOES-14 has just released video taken on August 20 (that's today!) of Hurricane Bill, the first hurricane of the season. This spectacular video is a collection of a few quick movies put together by the GOES-14 team and includes an impressive zoom-out, showing how big the hurricane is, relative to the hemisphere. Yes, Bill is large, with sustained winds of 217 kph (135 mph), making it a powerful Category 4 storm. The winds extend outward up to 80 miles from the center. Bill stretches more than 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) across, and the storm's partially cloud-filled eye is nearly 50 kilometers (31 miles) wide.

See an image below of Bill from NASA's MODIS satellite, taken on August 19, 2009.

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As of August 20 at 5 pm EDT, Hurricane Bill was located 790 miles SSE of Bermuda, while continuing to move quickly off to the northwest. Bill should begin turning in a more northerly direction by later Friday.

Based on all available forecast data at this time, it appears that Bill will track east of the Eastern U.S. Coast over the next few days.

You can follow a tracker on Weather.com to find out where Hurricane Bill is currently located.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com