NASA MODIS Image of the Day: June 8, 2008 – 2008 Hurricane Seasons Begin in Eastern Pacific and Atlantic
The eastern Pacific hurricane season of 2008 was inaugurated when, on May 29, thunderstorms over the Pacific Ocean about 250 miles southwest of Nicaragua became Tropical Storm Alma.
Alma is the first named storm of the 2008 eastern Pacific season.
Alma moved north and made landfall on the coast of Nicaragua. As it crossed Central America, the storm fell apart as a circulating system, but the remaining moisture and energy emerged over the Gulf of Honduras to the north. There, on May 30, those remnants spun up into Tropical Storm Arthur, which is the first named storm of the Atlantic season. On Thursday, May 29, the MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite observed Tropical Storm Alma as it was making landfall in Nicaragua. The familiar shape of a hurricane—a pinwheel of clouds spinning around an obvious eye—is hard to make out in the image. The center of circulation was just offshore, south of the city of León. According to the National Hurricane Center, Alma was the first hurricane ever to make landfall on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and it was the first Pacific hurricane to strike anywhere on the coast of Central America since 1949.
