To the relief of everyone on the Eastern seaboard and the rest of the world, Hurricane Irene has now been downgraded to Tropical Storm Irene. Throughout the time the storm soaked the eastern seaboard with blustery winds and a deluge of rain, NASA’s GOES-13 satellite has been sending magnificent pictures back to Earth. This latest shot was taken at 8:32 A.M. EDT on Sunday morning, 28 minutes before Irene’s landfall near Coney Island in New York City.
Notice how the storm lacks the tight organization showed in the Hurricane Irene pictures NASA sent back to earth yesterday, with today’s Irene lacking that ominous eye that peered out from its center as it moved up the coast as a Category 1 hurricane. By the time it had reached New York City, its maximum sustained winds were a manageable 65 mph.
That’s not to say there wasn’t suffering involved in the enormous storm, where officials have attributed at least 9 deaths to Irene’s massive amounts of rainfall, wind, flooding and its associated calamities. Even though millions of people are without power today and flooding is a serious problem in numerous cities and towns, Irene didn’t turn out to be the monster most observers anticipated.
