Extreme Weather News

Moisture pumping into southern California and the Desert Southwest from the remnants of hurricane Dolores has caused record July rainfall. This rainfall may provide some drought relief to the state of California that has been in the grip of exceptional drought conditions. Heavy flooding caused an interstate 10 bridge collapse on Sunday July 19, 2015 forcing closure of this main roadway between Southern California and Phoenix, Arizona. Data from NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) were used to estimate the extreme amount of rain that fell during the past week in that

Typhoon Nangka was a super typhoon with winds of 135 kts (155 mph) over the open waters of the Pacific Ocean last week. Nangka is predicted by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) to have weakened to barely typhoon intensity with winds of less than 65 kts ( 75 mph) before hitting Japan on July 16, 2015. The GPM core observatory satellite passed above early in the life of the typhoon on July 6, 2015 when Nangka was east-southeast of Guam. At that time Nangka had formed a nearly perfectly circular eye that contained powerful storms reaching to altitudes of close to 17km (10.5 miles). GPM flew

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued it's first advisory for tropical storm Claudette on Monday July 13, 2015 at 1PM AST. The GPM core observatory satellite had an outstanding view as it flew above tropical storm Claudette on the early evening of July 13, 2015 at 2046 UTC (4:46 PM EDT). Rainfall measurements were made by GPM’s Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments. Claudette is a relatively small tropical storm with vertical wind shear dampening future development but GPM found heavy rainfall in some strong thunderstorms. GPM's radar instrument

The GPM satellite passed over Tropical Storm Halola in the northwestern Pacific Ocean and found heaviest rainfall occurring north of the center of circulation. Halola formed in the Central Pacific Ocean and moved into the Northwestern Pacific Ocean basin today, July 13. On July 13 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT) Tropical Storm Halola had maximum sustained winds near 60 knots (69 mph/111.1 kph). It was located near 14.5 North and 177.0 East, about 694 nautical miles (798 miles/1,285 km) east-southeast of Wake Island. Halola has tracked west-northwestward at 11 knots (12.6 mph/20.3 kph). The Global

A tropical storm called Ela formed east-southeast of the Hawaiian Islands on July 8, 2015 and is expected to pass to the north of the island chain this weekend. GPM had a good view of Ela as the satellite flew over the forming tropical storm on July 8, 2015 at 1316 UTC (3:16 AM HST). The satellite passed above Ela again on July 9, 2015 at 0234 UTC (July 8, 2015 4:34 PM HST) showing that rainfall bands associated with the tropical cyclone were better organized. GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments found today that rainfall was falling at a rate