How Close Did Hurricane Bill Come to the US East Coast?

By Nancy Atkinson - August 24, 2009 08:50 AM UTC | Planetary Science

Hurricane Bill kept its distance from the US mainland, seemingly skirting along the eastern seaboard and fitting perfectly within the coastline curves on this NASA satellite image. Thankfully, the storm largely missed the eastern states, with the center of the storm well off the coast. It appears Bill will keep its distance from the Canadian coast as well. It has now been downgraded to a tropical storm, and is expected to weaken over the next 24 hours. As of late Sunday night, the storm had maximum sustained winds near 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour with higher gusts. This image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, taken at 2:00 p.m. EDT (14:00 UTC) on August 23, 2009. Source: NASA Earth Observation website

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com