Hurricane Rick: Fly Into The Eye - from NASA's 250m MODIS Visible Imagery

NASA MODIS Imagery of Hurricane Rick at maximum intensity.

While landfall for Rick this past week was thankfully mainly anticlimactic, there's no doubt that the storm's incredibly rapid development into a 180mph hurricane will have meteorologists studying the storm for years to come.

With winds near 180 mph and estimated central pressure of 906 mb, Rick peaked just below Hurricane Linda (1997) with winds of 185 mph.

Rick's explosive expansion seemed due to a perfect blend of above average sea surface temperatures off the coast of Mexico (85-87 F) and +1 to +3 above average for this time of year (weak to moderate ENSO). Upper level winds remained very light or below 10 kts for the same timeframe as the storm spun up from category three to category five in a single day.

NASA recently released this high resolution imagery (250m view) of Hurricane Rick as the storm spun up to maximum strength. This animation will fly you into the eyewall region and back.

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