As of 2AM EDT, Hurricane Irene was located at 21.3N, 72.6W, 400 miles southeast of Nassau. It was moving west-northwest at 9 mph with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, making it a Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Irene has a minimum central pressure of 966 mb. Hurricane warnings have been issued for all of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Tropical storm warnings are in effect for Haiti from Le Mole St. Nicholas to the Dominican Republic border.

Satellite Views
Figure 1 shows that Irene has a large eye visible in infrared imagery, (26 miles across accoring to a report from the Hurricane Hunters at 130AM) with well-defined outflow cirrus bands. Tuesday evening, TRMM, NASA’s tropical research satellite, flew directly overhead Irene, getting a radar scan of the storm using it’s downward pointing radar, shown in Figure 2. It is immediately apparent that Irene has well-developed bands of rain showers, with strong storms present in the eyewall.

Figure 1 IR satellite view of Irene taken at 113AM EDT, August 23, 2011

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