Extreme Weather News

V iew full-screen in STORM Event Viewer Saudi Arabia is not thought of as a region rife with intense thunderstorms, but its southwestern region features an abrupt orographic incline from the Red Sea coast toward the interior. Here, warm moist air can be forceably lifted up the slope of the Sarawat Mountains resulting in torrential downpours and flash flooding. In this overflight, we see an occasion of this, with DPR cloud top heights up to 20km and 89 GHz brightness temperatures near 55K, suggesting the likelihood of hail within the deep convective plume.

The GPM core observatory satellite had an excellent view of tropical storm MALIKSI when it passed over southern Japan on June 10, 2018 at 1759 UTC. GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments collected data that revealed the horizontal and vertical extent of precipitation within the tropical storm. GPM's GMI showed that heavy downpours were occurring in a rain band wrapping around MALIKSI's northeastern side. GPM's radar (DPR Ku Band) found that bands of storms moving around the northwestern side of the tropical storm were dropping rain at a rate of

As expected, tropical storm Aletta intensified and became a hurricane. Aletta was a powerful hurricane with winds of about 85 kts (98 mph) when the GPM core observatory satellite passed over head on June 7, 2018 at 18:38 PM MDT (June 8, 2018 at 0038 UTC). GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments showed that hurricane Aletta contained powerful storms that were producing heavy precipitation. Very strong convective storms were producing heavy rainfall in Aletta's eye wall while the most extreme downpours were shown in a large feeder band wrapping

Early today Tropical Depression Two-E was upgraded to tropical storm Aletta. This is the first tropical storm of the 2018 eastern North Pacific season. Aletta was located well southwest of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts that Aletta will become a hurricane tomorrow as it moves westward over the open waters of the eastern North Pacific ocean. The GPM core observatory satellite passed above developing tropical storm Aletta on June 6, 2018 at 0046 UTC. This image shows precipitation measurements that were calculated from data collected by GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual

The first cyclone to strike the area, Sagar, formed from an area of thunderstorm activity located in the western Arabian Sea south of the island of Socatra. The area of low pressure associated with the thunderstorms first moved northwest into the far eastern Gulf of Aden, where it intensified into a minimal tropical storm with sustained winds estimated at 35 knots (~40 mph) by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC), before turning west and then southwest down the middle of the Gulf. As it moved down the Gulf, Sagar slowly strengthened into a stronger tropical storm with sustained winds