Envisat captures Hurricane Jimena

This Envisat image captures Hurricane Jimena roaring towards Mexico's Baja California Peninsula on 31 August 2009 (18:09 UT). Around the time of the acquisition, Jimena had maximum sustained winds of nearly 250 km/h and was just short of being classified as a Category 5 storm – the highest danger rating for a hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson intensity scale. Instruments aboard ESA’s Envisat allow it to observe various features of hurricanes, including cloud structure, wind and wave fields, sea-surface temperature and sea-surface height. Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) optical instrument acquired this image working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m.