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2002

GPM IMERG Measures Rainfall from Tropical Storm Cristobal

This animation shows NASA IMERG rain rates (blue shading) and accumulations (green shading) alongside the NOAA low-pressure center track (red line) of Tropical Storm Amanda/Cristobal. The origin of this storm was in the eastern Pacific Ocean in late May 2020, where it was named Tropical Storm Amanda as it approached the southern Mexican and Central American coast. Amanda made landfall in Guatemala on May 31, where it began to deliver the first of a series of heavy rain pulses that led to flooding in the region. After temporarily stalling over land, the system reformed over the Bay of Campeche on June 1 as Tropical Storm Cristobal and made its second landfall on June 3 in Mexico. The storm continued to deliver several pulses of heavy rainfall to southern Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Some areas of the region accumulated over 60 cm (~2 feet) of rainfall throughout Cristobal's passage. The storm then crossed the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall in Louisiana on June 7 and progressed northward as a tropical depression before being classified as an extratropical low pressure system over Wisconsin on June 10. Large swaths of the U.S. Gulf Coast and Midwest as far north as Wisconsin saw accumulations in excess of 10 cm (~4 inches), and some areas along the coasts of Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi received over 20 cm (~8 inches), during Cristobal’s passage.

Cristobal Drenches Central America

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is off to a busy start. By the first week of June, Tropical Storm Arthur had already brushed North Carolina , Tropical Storm Bertha had drenched South Carolina , and the third named storm of the year— Cristobal—was dropping torrential rain on the Yucatán Peninsula. The storm first developed in the Pacific in late May as Tropical Storm Amanda, spinning off the southern end of a seasonal low-pressure pattern called the Central American Gyre . After making landfall in Guatemala and causing deadly floods in El Salvador , Amanda weakened and became less organized

Short-lived Bertha Brings Heavy Rains to Parts of Florida

Bertha was a named storm for just the briefest of periods, becoming a tropical storm on the morning of Wednesday May 27th at 8:30 am EDT just one hour before it made landfall along the South Carolina coast near Charleston. After making landfall, Bertha quickly weakened into a tropical depression and was then accelerated northward by the southerly flow between a deep trough of low pressure over the Mississippi Valley to the west and a ridge of high pressure located just off the US East Coast. Because of this, rainfall totals over the Carolina’s were not very heavy. Bertha’s biggest impact actually occurred when it was still in the formation process, before it became organized enough to be named. On Monday May 25th, a trough of low pressure became established over the Florida Straits, initiating shower and thunderstorm activity in the region. Over the next day, as this trough, which extended eastward over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and eventually led to Bertha, slowly moved northward up the Florida peninsula, it provided a focus for showers and thunderstorms, which brought heavy rains to southeast Florida.
Cyclone Amphan IMERG Rainfall Totals
On May 16, 2020, NASA / JAXA's GPM Core Observatory satellite observed the early stages of Tropical Cyclone Amphan as it tracked north over the Bay of Bengal. The below GPM overpass shows precipitation within Cyclone Amphan a day before it explosively intensified into a category 4-equivalent cyclone. Even at this early stage, Amphan produced heavy rain rates near its center and to its west and southwest. View fullscreen in STORM Event Viewer NASA monitored the heavy rain associated with Tropical Cyclone Amphan as it made landfall at 0900 UTC (2:30 PM local time) on May 20, 2020. Landfall...
Typhoon Vongfong IMERG Rainfall Totals
The first typhoon of the season, Vongfong, struck the central Philippines this past week (where it is known as Ambo) as a strong category 2 storm, bringing strong winds and locally heavy rainfall. Vongfong formed into a tropical depression in the southern Philippine Sea west of Palau on Sunday May 10th from a disturbance that had been slowly making its way westward over the past several days. After becoming a depression, the system moved northward toward the central Philippine Sea and slowly began to intensify. Then, on the 12th when it reached tropical storm intensity, Vongfong’s northward...