NASA has released a video of Hurricane Bill today from the GOES-14 satellite. The video was put together from a series of still frames taken by the satellite using both infrared and visible imagery and provides different views of Hurricane Bill on August 20.

Earlier this summer, NASA launched the latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O. Recently operations have been turned over to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the satellite was renamed GOES-14. The satellite is still being tested in orbit, and it captured video of Hurricane Bill on August 20, while it was on its way to Bermuda.

The spectacular video is a collection of a few quick movies put together by the GOES-14 team from the NASA GOES Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The video includes an impressive zoom-out, showing how big the hurricane is, relative to the hemisphere. Bill is a large hurricane, more than 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) across, and the storm’s partially cloud-filled eye is nearly 50 kilometers (31 miles) wide.

On August 20, the date of the movie, Hurricane Bill had sustained winds of 135 mph, making it a powerful Category 4 storm. At that time hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 80 miles from the center. On August 21, Bill’s sustained winds were near 110 mph and hurricane force winds extended up to 115 miles.

Super Typhoon Choi-wan had just become a monstrous Category 4 super typhoon on the morning of September 15, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this photo-like image. Choi-wan is a perfect circle with bands of clouds pin-wheeling around the dense center. The dark blue surface of the Pacific Ocean is visible through the clear eye, which is defined by a towering wall of clouds.

At the time the image was taken, Choi-wan had sustained winds estimated at 230 kilometers per hour (145 miles per hour or 125 knots), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Choi-wan was strengthening. Twenty-four hours later, the storm reached Category 5 status with sustained winds of 260 km/hr (160 mph or 140 knots). The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expected the storm to intensify a little more.

While the storm raked across the Northern Mariana Islands and was targeting the small islands of Iwo To and Chinchi Jima, it was not forecast to hit any major land mass. In this image, Super Typhoon Choi-wan is centered over the northern arc of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, with the larger islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian located on the southern edge of the storm. The islands north of Saipan are volcanic and are either unoccupied or sparsely populated.

The large image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides the image in additional resolutions.

The once mighty Super Typhoon Choi-Wan that reached Category 5 strength on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane/typhoon scale has become extratropical and is fading in the northern Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning center issued a final warning on Saturday, September 19, when Choi-Wan was making the extra-tropical transition.

On Saturday, September 19, Choi-Wan still had maximum sustained winds of hurricane strength, near 86 mph, still at Category One typhoon strength. At one time, the storm’s maximum sustained winds had clocked at 161 mph. On Saturday, it was located about 410 miles southeast of Tokyo, Japan and moving further into the open North Pacific Ocean near 21 mph.

On Friday, NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over Typhoon Choi-Wan and captured infrared and microwave images on September 18 at 12:29 p.m. EDT (16:29 UTC). Microwave images are created when data from NASA’s Aqua satellite Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) instruments are combined. These microwave images indicate where there is precipitation or ice in the cloud tops and the images from last Friday revealed Choi-Wan still had cold, high thunderstorms.

The infrared imagery revealed that there were also some towering, strong thunderstorms around Choi-Wan’s center on Friday.

Over the weekend, Choi-wan lost strength in the adverse atmospheric conditions as wind shear battered the storm. Choi-wan made the transition to extra-tropical status over the weekend.

A conversion to “extratropical” status means that the area of low pressure (known as Choi-Wan) eventually loses its warm core and becomes a cold-core system. During the time it is becoming extratropical the cyclone’s primary energy source changes from the release of latent heat from condensation (from thunderstorms near the storm’s center) to baroclinic (temperature and air pressure) processes. When a cyclone becomes extratropical it will usually connect with nearby fronts and or troughs (extended areas of low pressure) consistent with a baroclinic (pressure) system. When that happens it appears the system grows larger while the core weakens.

Typhoon Choi-Wan passed the island of Iwo To stirring up heavy surf, hurricane-force winds and torrential, flooding rains. This weekend, it will continue on its northeasterly track paralleling Japan, while its center remains in the open Western Pacific Ocean.

Microwave and infrared imagery from NASA’s Aqua satellite during the early morning hours of September 18 revealed extremely high thunderstorms in Typhoon Choi-Wan as it passed the island of Iwo To and was approaching Chichi Jima.

NASA satellite imagery showed that the tops of the thunderstorms are so high they reached the tropopause, the level of atmosphere between the troposphere and stratosphere. Those high thunderstorms mean very heavy rainfall for the area underneath. The cloud tops extended to the 200 millibar level in the atmosphere where temperatures are as cold or colder than -63 Fahrenheit.

Microwave images are created when data from NASA’s Aqua satellite Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) instruments are combined. These microwave images indicate where there is precipitation or ice in the cloud tops and the latest microwave image revealed Choi-Wan had cold, high thunderstorms.

On September 18 at 11 a.m. EDT, Choi-Wan was located 120 miles west-northwest of Iwo To, near 25.8 north and 139.4 east. It was moving north-northeast near 13 mph. Choi-Wan’s maximum sustained winds were near 126 mph and those winds were still generating huge waves, as high as 41 feet.

AIRS Infrared satellite imagery showed that Choi-Wan has maintained a very well-defined eye with a secondary outer eyewall. The infrared imagery also showed the stark temperature contrast between the icy cloud tops in the storm against the warm waters in the Western Pacific Ocean that continue to power the storm.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JWTC) noted their “environmental analysis indicates Choi-Wan has crested the western edge of the mid-level steering subtropical ridge axis in a corridor of low vertical wind shear and warm sea surface temperatures (well in excess of 28 Celsius or 82 Fahrenheit).”

The JWTC said that Choi-Wan may intensify a little over the next day because it’s in a favorable environment. After that, the storm will begin weakening and transitioning into an extra-tropical storm.

Marty was still holding onto tropical storm status on September 18, with maximum sustained winds near 40 mph and taking a slow march through the Eastern Pacific Ocean. At 11 a.m. EDT he was located about 360 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, near 18.9 north and 112.4 west. Marty is moving near 7 mph and has a minimum central pressure near 1004 millibars. Over the past two days, he only moved 40 miles!

The GOES-11 satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Marty off the western Mexican coast on September 18 at 12:45 p.m. EDT. GOES is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NASA’s GOES Project, located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. creates some of the satellite images from the GOES satellites.

The National Hurricane Center reported that there was a “burst of deep convection (rising air and thunderstorm development)” near Marty’s center this morning, however, cloud top temperatures (as measured by NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on the Aqua satellite) have begun to warm. Warming cloud top temperatures are indicative of thunderstorms that have less strength than those in stronger tropical cyclones.

Marty’s fate over the weekend lies in cooler waters and drier air. Those are the two factors he’s going to face as he continues moving, and they’ll weaken him over the weekend. Marty will likely be a remnant low pressure area by the beginning of next week.