Philippe was still a tropical storm when the TRMM satellite passed above on 3 October 2011 at 1806 UTC (2:06 PM EDT) but the National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts that the storm may become a hurricane in a couple days. TRMM's TMI and PR data show that bands of powerful convective thunderstorms were still dropping rain at a rate of over 50mm/hr (~2 inches) near the center of the storm.