The ninth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season formed over this past weekend, and it looks like it’s on a slow track to getting a name. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center note in their discussion on August 10 that computer models indicate that it may strengthen enough to become a tropical storm in couple of days.

Meanwhile, Tropical Depression 9E (TD9E) remains disorganized, and that’s evident in NASA’s satellite data from NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), an instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The AIRS infrared image reveals 2 areas of clouds that make up TD9E, not a tight circle or comma shaped storm, which would indicate a well- organized tropical cyclone.

At 11 a.m. EDT, TD9E had sustained winds near 35 mph, and was moving west near 9 mph. It was quite far from land, near 14.9 north and 123.1 west. That’s about 1,025 miles west-southwest of the Baja California, an area that seems to be a hot-spot for tropical development this season. TD9E’s minimum central pressure is 1007 millibars.

AIRS satellite imagery from August 10 at 5:47 a.m. EDT shows that the storm doesn’t have any intense precipitation areas yet. NASA false-colors the AIRS infrared imagery to indicate the location of the highest clouds in a storm. In the AIRS imagery, purple coloration indicates the highest clouds, while blue coloration indicates lower clouds. The AIRS image indicated only the lower clouds in TD9E. Those clouds, however are still icy cold, about 240 Kelvin, or minus 27F.

The bottom line in storms is: the colder the clouds are, the higher they are, and the more powerful the thunderstorms are that make up the cyclone. TD9E has a way to go to get those powerful thunderstorms and the purple coloration show up in the NASA AIRS infrared satellite imagery.

Typhoon Morakot brought enormous amounts of rainfall to Taiwan and China and NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) estimated it from space. The monster Typhoon Morakot that was over 1,000 miles in diameter last week brought widespread damage to Taiwan and China as crossed Taiwan and made landfall over the weekend in mainland China.

The TRMM satellite, managed by NASA and the Japanese Space Agency can measure rainfall from space. TRMM data, along with information from other satellites, allows researchers to see how much rain is falling over most of the world every three hours and map areas of potential flooding. Maps that show areas of potential floods use precipitation radar data and high resolution measurements of water content of clouds made by microwave radiometers.

The rainfall map that TRMM created from August 3-10 over Taiwan and China showed more than 40 inches of rain fell in central and northern Taiwan as a result of Typhoon Morakot. Some areas even reported isolated amounts near 100 inches (more than 8 feet) of water!

Those rainfall maps are also made into a seven-day “movie loop” that allows users to track storms as they travel over land and oceans around the globe. The rainfall animations are developed in the Laboratory for Atmospheres of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. by the TRMM precipitation research team.

The tremendous amounts of rain caused mudslides and raging rivers that overflowed their banks and caused widespread flooding and erosion. In the city of Chihpen, Taiwan, one hotel that was evacuated along the banks of a river collapsed into the river. In the Hsiao-lin village it is feared that a mudslide buried more than 600 residents alive. News reports in Taiwan are calling Morakot’s flooding the worst in 50 years.

According to the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper, mainland China experienced sustained winds near 75 mph as Morakot made landfall in the Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. More than 500,000 were evacuated and its heavy rains flooded coastal areas and destroyed as many as 1,800 homes.