Extreme Weather News

Two powerful typhoons have hit the Philippines in less than a week. The first was Typhoon Sarika (known as Karen in the Philippines) that formed east of the Philippines on October 12, 2016. Sarika intensified and had peak sustained winds of 115 kts (132 mph). This wind speed made it the equivalent of a category four on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Sarika made landfall in the Philippines on Sunday in the northern province of Aurora on the island of Luzon. Three people were killed as Sarika pounded the Philippines with heavy winds and flooding rainfall. After hitting the Philippines

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite saw heavy rain with rates of around 50 mm/hr (~2 inches/hr shown in dark red) in the front that absorbed the remnants of former northwestern Pacific Ocean Typhoon Songda. These images were created from data taken on Saturday, Oct. 15 as the front was affecting the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The rain is depicted in red and green areas, indicating heavy, moderate and light rain, respectively. Images produced by Jacob Reed (Telophase/NASA GSFC) and caption by Rob Gutro (GSFC)

Hurricane Nicole has now been active for almost two weeks. Nicole was still a hurricane with winds of about 70 kts (81 mph) when the GPM core observatory satellite flew over on October 17, 2016 at 0436 UTC (2:36 am EDT). The GPM satellite had a good look at the rainfall in Nicole's large ragged eye. GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) swath sliced through the center of Nicole's eye and found some very heavy rainfall. A few strong storms in the southern side of the eye were dropping rain at a rate of over 113 mm (4.4 inches) per hour. GPM's radar (DPR KU band) data collected with

While powerful Hurricane Matthew drew a lot of attention as it made its way through the northern Caribbean and the Bahamas before ravaging the US East Coast with strong winds and massive flooding, another storm was lurking nearby in the western Atlantic--Nicole. Nicole, which like Matthew, also originated from a tropical wave that made its way across the central Atlantic from the coast of Africa. Nicole first became a tropical storm on the morning of the 4th of October about 525 miles northeast of San Juan Puerto Rico just after Matthew, a powerful Category 4 storm at the time, had devastated

Hurricane Matthew devastated western Haiti and killed over 1,000 people. Matthew also took the lives of at least 37 deaths in the United States with 18 deaths occurring in the state of North Carolina. Flooding is still widespread in North Carolina. Some rivers in North Carolina such as the Tar and the Neuse are still rising. This rainfall analysis was accomplished using data from NASA's Integrated Multi-satelliE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG). IMERG is a unified U.S. algorithm that provides a multi-satellite precipitation product. IMERG is run twice in near-real time with the “Early” multi