Hurricane Katrina had just become a category 1 hurricane when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on August 25, 2005, at 12:30 p.m., Eastern Daylight Savings Time. The hurricane formed as a tropical depression late on August 23 and developed quickly into a tropical storm by 11 a.m. the next morning. By the time MODIS acquired this image, the storm had developed into a category 1 hurricane, the lowest category in the hurricane-strength scale. Katrina had winds of 120 kilometers per hour (75 miles per hour).

A more serious danger is Katrina’s rains. The storm was moving quite slowly as of August 26, just 10 km/h (6 mph). This means that Katrina’s heavy rains will linger longer over one area, dumping 15-25 centimeters (6-10 inches) of rain over Florida and the Bahamas and possibly up to 38 cm (15 inches) in some regions, the National Hurricane Center warns.