12th tropical depression appears huge on satellite imagery

The Eastern Pacific has generated the twelfth tropical depression of the hurricane season, and satellite imagery showed that it dwarfs nearby Tropical Storm Karina.

Tropical cyclones are usually a couple of hundred miles in diameter. The average size of a tropical cyclone is around 304 nautical miles (350 miles/600 km) in diameter. The National Hurricane Center noted on August 18 at 11 a.m. EDT that Tropical Depression 12-E was at least 800 nautical miles (920.6 miles/1,482 km) in diameter! By comparison, Tropical Storm Karina is a couple of hundred miles in diameter. At 11 a.m. EDT on August 18, tropical-storm-force winds extended outward up to 80 miles (130 km) from Karina's center.

NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland generates visible and infrared satellite imagery of the Eastern and Central Pacific Oceans from NOAA's GOES-West and GOES-East satellites.

On August 18, at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) the center of Tropical Depression Twelve-e was located near latitude 16.7 north and longitude 117.7 west, that's about 665 miles (1,065 km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph (55 kph), and the depression is expected to become a tropical storm late on August 18. The depression is moving toward the west-northwest near 8 mph (13 kph) and the National Hurricane Center expects a turn toward the northwest followed by a turn north on August 19.