GPM IMERG Adds Up Heavy Rainfall from Typhoon Mangkhut

In the past week, Typhoon Mangkhut has affected the Philippines, mainland China, and Hong Kong, as shown in this 7-day animation of NASA's satellite-based IMERG precipitation product. The upper frame shows the storm-total accumulation starting at 0100 UTC on September 11, 2018. Storm-total accumulations in excess of 4 inches stretched from Manila to the northern tip of Luzon Island where the rainfall triggered deadly landslides. The lower frame shows the short-term accumulation in a 3-hour period that slides from the beginning to the end of the 7-day-long movie. The sliding 3-hour accumulation clearly shows how Mangkhut's compact eyewall prior to its Philippines landfall was replaced by a much larger, ragged eyewall thereafter. In some cases, interactions with mountainous islands greatly reduce a tropical cyclone's rainfall, but in this case, Typhoon Mangkhut was too powerful to succumb to these mountain interactions. 

Visualization by Matt Lammers, Owen Kelley, and Jacob Reed