Although not a very powerful storm, Henriette is still responsible for seven fatalities along Mexico's Pacific coast mainly as a result of rain-induced mudslides. The hardest hit area was the coastal resort town of Acapulco.

The eleventh tropical depression of the season in the East Pacific (TD #11E) formed about 165 miles off of the southern Pacific coast of Mexico on the afternoon (local time) of the 30th of August 2007. The system took a northwesterly track parallel to the coastline and slowly strengthened. By the next day, it had become a weak tropical storm and was given the name Henriette. Although the center remained about 70 miles off the coast as it was passing Acapulco, Henriette dumped heavy rains along the coast that lead to mudslides in the area. Over the next few days, Henriette changed little in strength and remained a tropical storm as it stayed off shore and parallel to the Mexican coastline. This image shows Tropical Storm Henriette as it was moving northwestward in the East Pacific before it became a hurricane. The image on the right was taken by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (or TRMM) satellite at 16:43 UTC (9:43 am PDT) on the 3rd of September 2007 and shows the horizontal pattern of rain intensity within the storm. Rain rates in the center of the swath are from the TRMM PR, and those in the outer swath come from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). The rain rates are overlaid on infrared (IR) data from the TRMM Visible Infrared Scanner (VIRS). Although the storm is not very strong, several rain bands of light to moderate intensity (blue and green areas, respectively) spiral around the center and extend for several hundred miles. At the time of this image, maximum sustained winds were estimated at 60 knots (69 mph) by the National Hurricane Center.

Henriette strengthened into a minimal Category 1 hurricane on the 4th before making landfall later that day on the southern tip of Baja California with sustained winds of 75 mph. Damage was reported as minimal. This next image was captured by TRMM at 14:50 UTC (7:50 am PDT) on September 5th and shows Henriette as it was moving north-northwest over the Gulf of California after it had made its initial landfall on the Baja Peninsula. The large, ragged eye is exposed on the southwest corner (break in the rain), hallmarks of a system that is decaying or has been weakened, in this case likely due to the interaction with land. Most of the rain is north and east of the center with bands of heavy rain located just offshore of mainland Mexico (dark red areas). Henriette was still a minimal Category 1 hurricane at the time of this last image. The system is expected to dump several inches of rain over the terrain of mainland Mexico.

TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.

Images produced by Hal Pierce (SSAI/NASA GSFC) and caption by Steve Lang (SSAI/NASA GSFC)