Tropical Cyclone 4A formed late yesterday off the western coast of India in the Arabian Sea, and NASA’s infrared imagery captured some high, powerful thunderstorms developing in the storm’s center. Tropical Cyclone (TC) 4A formed yesterday around 4 p.m. ET, 380 miles south-southwest of Mumbai, India, with maximum sustained winds near 37 mph. By 10 a.m. ET today, November 10, 4A had moved north about 135 miles. Cyclone 4A was located about 245 miles south-southwest of Mumbai, near 15.2 North and 71.1. East. It still maintained sustained winds near 37 mph, and was moving north at 13 mph. The U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center, the organization that forecasts tropical cyclones in that region of the world, noted that gusty winds between 34-40 mph (55-65 kmph) and heavy rainfall (as much as 10 inches or 250 millimeters) will affect Konkan and Goa and Madhya Maharastra over the next two days as the storm moves north. Gusty winds and heavy rainfall is also expected over coastal Karnataka, Kerala and Lakshadweep in the next day, South Gujarat will begin to feel rainfall and gusty winds from 04A on November 11. NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over TC4A on November 9 at 20:59 UTC (3:59 p.m. ET) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard captured an infrared image of Cyclone 4A’s cold thunderstorm tops. The infrared imagery revealed that TC4A’s cloud tops had some strong thunderstorms around its center of circulation, where temperatures are colder than -63 Fahrenheit. That indicates strong convection and development of thunderstorms that power the cyclone. TC4A is expected to continue intensifying over the next couple of days while traveling north in the Arabian Sea and continuing to parallel the western Indian coast. It is expected to make landfall east of the India / Pakistan border late Wednesday Universal Time (mid-day Eastern Time). |
NASA’s TRMM spacecraft observed Tropical Storm Ida on November 9, 2009 at 1218 UTC (7:18 a.m. ET) just before Ida made landfall. Ida made landfall at 6:40 a.m. ET on November 10. In the animation, scattered convective thunderstorms are shown producing moderate to heavy rainfall of over 50 millimeters per hour (~2 inches) north of Ida’s center of circulation and in a strong band on the eastern side. At the time, Ida had winds estimated at 70 knots (~80.5 mph). The rain structure in the animation was taken by TRMM’s Tropical Microwave Imager (TMI) and TRMM’s Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments. TRMM looks underneath of the storm’s clouds to reveal the underlying rain structure. The colored isosurface under the clouds show the rain seen by the PR instrument. In the animation, light rain (0.25 inches) is depicted in blue, heavier rain (25 mm or 1 inch per hour) in yellow and extremely heavy rain in red (50 mm or 2 inches per hour).
Tropical Storm Ida made landfall around 6:40 a.m. ET this morning on Dauphin Island, along the Alabama coastline. NASA’s GOES Project created the latest image from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-12) data showed that the bulk of Ida’s clouds and rain are now inland, even though Ida’s center was just near the Alabama coast. Ida has the potential to produce rainfall measuring 3 to 6 inches an hour from areas that include the western panhandle of Florida, north and central Georgia, eastern Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina. Some isolated areas may even receive as much as 8 inches of rainfall. The largest swaths of rain expected today will stretch from east of Panama City to Tallahassee, Florida and Birmingham, Alabama east to Atlanta, Georgia. This morning, November 10 at 7 a.m. ET, Ida was still a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds near 45 mph. Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 175 miles from the center. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-12 captured a visible image of Ida’s landfall on November 10 in Alabama. GOES is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA’s GOES Project, located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. creates some of the GOES satellite images. |
