GOES-13 Satellite watches Emily fizzle, morph and hope for a comeback

Published: Monday, August 8, 2011 - 12:33 in Astronomy & Space

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This visible image of Emily's remnant clouds was taken from the GOES-13 satellite on Aug. 5 at 16:01 UTC (12:01 p.m. EDT) just north of the eastern tip of Cuba. Higher thunderstorms in the center are casting small shadows on the lower, less powerful thunderstorms around them.
NASA/NOAA GOES Project, Dennis Chesters

13 satellite shows the creating and morphing of what was once Tropical Storm Emily into an elongated area of low pressure over the Caribbean Sea. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13 provides continuous visible and infrared imagery of the eastern U.S. and Atlantic Ocean basin from its position in space. GOES satellites are operated by NOAA, and the NASA GOES Project located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. creates images and compiled them into a video of Emily's life so far.

In an animation of GOES-13 satellite imagery, Emily is observed from August 3 through August 8 and shows Emily forming east of Hispaniola and moving west over the Dominican Republic, Haiti and eastern Cuba. On August 5, a still image from GOES-13 showed what appears to be the center of the low was just north of the eastern tip of Cuba. Higher thunderstorms in the center are casting small shadows on the lower, less powerful thunderstorms around them.

Emily is now a surface trough or elongated area of low pressure. The National Hurricane Center noted that Emily's remnants contain a large area of cloudiness and thunderstorms extending from eastern Cuba northeastward across the southeastern Bahamas.

There's a good chance that Emily can make a comeback and get her act together on the weekend as upper-level winds become more favorable. The National Hurricane Center gives Emily a 60% chance of making that comeback over the weekend.

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

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