After striking the northeast coast of Nicaragua as a powerful Category 4 storm back on November 3, Hurricane Eta weakened rapidly over Central America but still brought major flooding and triggered numerous landslides that so far have resulted in at least 250 fatalities across the region, according to media reports. Eta was down to a tropical depression when the center re-emerged over the northwestern Caribbean on the evening of November 5. An upper-level trough over the Gulf of Mexico first steered Eta northeastward towards Cuba on the 6th. Because it was disorganized after its trek across

The extremely active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, aided by the ongoing La Niña, continues on. After Hurricane Zeta made landfall along the northern part of the Gulf Coast, yet another hurricane has arisen - Hurricane Eta, the strongest of the season. Like Zeta, Eta also formed in the Caribbean, where sea surface temperatures are still running quite warm at around 29° C, almost a full degree above average and well above the typical 26° C needed for tropical cyclone development. But while Zeta turned north into the Gulf of Mexico, Eta moved westward where it delivered powerful winds and

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory satellite flew over Hurricane Eta at 11:41 p.m. CT on Tuesday, Nov. 3 (0541 UTC Wednesday, Nov. 4). GPM observed the storm’s rainfall with its two unique science instruments: the GPM Microwave Imager ( GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar ( DPR). As the visualization shows, the instruments observed a large swath of heavy precipitation extending to the north and east of the hurricane’s center, which matched earlier forecasts that called for particularly heavy rainfall across the storm’s path. These two- and three-dimensional