subtropical storms

This past week, something rather unusual happened off the coast of Chile: a rare subtropical storm formed in the Southeast Pacific Ocean. Cyclone season is winding down in the Southwest Pacific near Australia where it is common for several tropical storms to form every year, but in the Southeast Pacific tropical storms are unheard of. This particular storm is a subtropical storm, which is a sort of a hybrid between a tropical cyclone like a hurricane, which gets it energy primarily from the condensation of humid air that forms over warm ocean waters, and an extratropical storm, which has a

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) upgraded a low pressure center in the Atlantic Ocean to subtropical storm Sean at 0900 UTC ( 4:00 AM EDT). The TRMM satellite flew directly above Sean a little earlier on 8 November 2011 at 0731 UTC ( 2:31 AM EDT) collecting data used in the precipitation analyses shown. TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR) data in the 3-D display above show that scattered moderate storms within Sean were reaching maximum heights of only about 11km (~6.8 miles). The "top down" view on the right above shows that Sean was well organized but most rainfall was of low to moderate