Katrina: Tracking the Course of a Killer Storm from Space

It had barely been registered as the eleventh named storm of the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season when this image of Tropical Storm Katrina was captured by NASA's Terra satellite on August 24, 2005, at 11:50 a.m., Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

A 3D perspective of Katrina points to the absence of intense rain near the center of the storm. At this point, it appears that Katrina is not likely to intensify quickly very soon.

As it nears Florida's coastline, Katrina begins to strengthen as it passes over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream on Aug. 25.

NASA's QuikSCAT tracks Katrina early in the morning on Aug. 25. At this point, the storm is moving slowly, at just 8 miles per hour, raising the prospect that it will linger longer over land as it rains. In this image, the highest wind speeds, shown in purple, surround the center of the storm.

By 12:30 on Aug. 25, Katrina had developed 75 mile per hour winds.

Striking south Florida, Katrina morphs from a Category 1 into a Category 3 storm. By early Saturday, Aug. 27, the eye of the hurricane was located about 180 miles west of Key West.

By Aug. 28, Katrina is upgraded to a Category 5 storm, registering winds of 150 MPH. Until Katrina, only 3 Category Five Hurricanes had made landfall in the United States since storm record keeping began.

On Aug. 29, Katrina weakened slightly into a Category 4 storm, but New Orleans was getting buffeted with 145 mph winds. The Crescent City also faced the possibility of a 20 foot storm surge.

An image of Katrina on Sunday, August 28, 2005 at 5:30 PM EDT viewed by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite. Blue represents areas with at least 0.25 inches of rain per hour. Green shows at least 0.5 inches of rain per hour. Yellow is at least 1.0 inches of rain and red is at least 2.0 inches of rain per hour.

The map (dated August 28, 2005) from the National Hurricane Center shows Katrina's predicted path for the next three to five days.

Katrina's Category 4 hurricane force winds were observed by NASA's QuikSCAT satellite on August 29, 2005, just prior to making landfall.

Much of New Orleans is under water in the top satellite image, taken on August 30, 2005, at 11:45 a.m. CDT by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Terra satellite. The images are shown in false color to make water visible against the land. Water is black or dark blue where it is colored with mud, vegetation is bright green, and clouds are light blue and white.

These two satellite images show the convective development of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday, August 27 as it moved west through the Gulf of Mexico.

The color scheme in the images, red normally indicates dry land, while blue indicates water. The top image shows the same area before Katrina hit, showing red throughout New Orleans, meaning dry land. The second image was captured on August 31, 2005, showing large areas of New Orleans and the adjacent Gulf Coast inundated with water.

By Sept. 15, the floods that buried up to 80 percent of New Orleans had noticeably subsided. The progress in draining the city is evident when the September 15 image is compared with an image taken one week earlier. In the lower image, taken by the Landsat 5 satellite on September 7, black flood water covers much of the city