Over the past seven days stormy weather has spawned tornadoes and dropped extremely heavy rainfall in the Northern Plains and the Great Lakes states. This deluge has caused flooding in South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinios. There have been concerns about the Mississippi, Big Sioux and Rock River Rivers escaping their banks. For more than sixteen years rainfall has been monitored by the TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) . These products have been developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center by the precipitation research team. (TMPA)

The first set of data from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission is now available to the public. The data set consists of GPM Microwave Imager instrument observations, called brightness temperatures. Brightness temperatures are a measurement of naturally occurring energy radiated, in this case, by precipitation particles like raindrops or snowflakes. Other data sets, like the rain rate information, will be released later this summer. By themselves, however, the brightness temperatures convey valuable data on the location and structure of storm systems – including tropical cyclones and

Tornadoes killed two people yesterday in Pilger, Nebraska. Tornadoes were reported with violent weather that also hit the states of North Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin. Heavy rainfall with this extreme weather was monitored with the TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. An analysis of TMPA rainfall totals is shown here for the seven days from June 10-17, 2014. This analysis indicated that the highest rainfall totals for the period (light purple) were greater than 300 mm (about 11.8 inches) in northwestern Iowa. Locations

Tropical storm NANUAK formed west of India on June 10, 2014 and since then has been moving toward the northwest over the open waters of the Arabian Sea. The TRMM satellite found that NANAUK contained powerful storms dropping rain at a rate of over 247.3 mm/hr (about 9.7 inches) when viewed on June 11, 2014 at 1549 UTC. An analysis of rainfall from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) is shown above overlaid on a 1530 UTC enhanced infrared image from the METEOSAT-7 satellite. TRMM PR data were used in the 3-D view shown in the second image. Those data showed that NANAUK

Tropical storm Cristina intensified and was a category one hurricane with wind speeds of over 65 kts (about 75 mph) when the TRMM satellite flew over on June 11, 2014 at 1142 UTC (4:42 AM PDT). A rainfall analysis that used data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments is shown overlaid on an enhanced infrared image received by the GOES-EAST satellite at 1145 UTC. TRMM TMI data clearly revealed that an eye had developed indicating that Cristina was definitely a hurricane. TRMM PR found that rain was falling at a rate of over 74.4 mm/hr (about 2.9 inches) in a