NASA sees a weaker Tropical Storm Ignacio north of Hawaiian Islands

When NASA's Terra satellite passed over Tropical Storm Ignacio on Sept. 1 it gathered cloud and wind data on the weakening storm.

Late on August 31 at 11 p.m. EDT the RapidScat instrument that flies aboard the International Space Station observed Ignacio's strongest winds surrounded the center of storm near 30 meters per second (108 kph/67 mph). Those winds weakened over the next 36 hours.

At 21:10 UTC (5:10 p.m. EDT) the MODIS instrument aboard Terra captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Ignacio well north of the Hawaiian Islands. As the storm weakened from a hurricane to a tropical storm, the eye was no longer visible.

At 11 a.m. EDT on September 2, there are no coastal watches or warnings in effect for Hawaii as Ignacio passing well north of the main Hawaiian Islands. There was no eye visible on satellite imagery, but the center of the storm was indicated by a "warm spot" on infrared imagery that stood out from the colder cloud top temperatures of the thunderstorms surrounding Ignacio's center. Those thunderstorms, however, had weakened since the previous day.

The center of Tropical Storm Ignacio was located near latitude 26.1 north and longitude 157.1 west. That's about 335 miles (540 km) north of Honolulu. Ignacio was moving toward the northwest near 12 mph (19 kph) and the storm is expected to turn to the north-northwest late on September 3. Maximum sustained winds were near 70 mph (110 kph) and slow weakening is expected starting on Thursday, September 3.