This Day in Weather History‘s Facebook page showed a photo of Tropical Storm Esther on September 20, 1061 as taken from the TIROS satellite. As far as I can tell, this is the first time that a tropical storm was identified first by satellite. Here’s the text accompanying the image:
“September 20th, 1961 – On September 10th, the Television Infrared Observation Satellite observed an area of thunderstorms west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands, suggesting a possible tropical cyclone. This storm is the first large tropical cyclone to be discovered on satellite imagery and would eventually become Hurricane Esther. On September 20th, Hurricane Esther, a Category 4 storm off of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina began to slow down as it moved north-northeast well off the Jersey shore. The storm continued to weaken as it made a five-day loop south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, then moved to Cape Cod and into Maine on the 26th.
The satellite image was Tropical Cyclone Esther on September 10th, 1961, two days before aircraft reconnaissance confirmed its existence.”
Since then, we’ve watched hundreds of storms develop from overhead, and this has become the primary way of identifying storms long before they get to us. We’ve come a long way, baby!
