A chain of tropical cyclones has started forming in the western Pacific Ocean. The GPM core observatory satellite saw two of them this morning. Tropical storm Chan-Hom was seen southeast of Guam by GPM on July 2, 1015 at 0834 UTC. Less than two hours later at 1006 UTC GPM passed over intensifying tropical depression 10W that was located east of the Philippines. Both are expected to become more powerful over the next few days. Typhoon Chan-Hom is predicted by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) to pass just northeast of Guam with winds of over 80 kts (92 mph). TD10W is also predicted to be

The GPM core observatory satellite recently had an excellent view of tropical storm Raquel in the South Pacific Ocean. Raquel was moving over the Solomon Islands on July 1, 2015 at 0749 UTC when viewed by GPM. Tropical cyclone activity normally ramps up in the northern hemisphere this time of the year so Raquel's development yesterday north of the Solomon Islands was a little surprising. Rainfall was measured by GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) and Microwave Imager (GMI) instruments. Those data showed that powerful thunderstorms within Raquel were dropping rain at a rate of over

The GPM core observatory satellite flew over a newly formed tropical depression Chan-Hom (09W) on June 30, 2015 at 0841Z. GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) found that rain was falling at a rate of over 78 mm (about 3 inches) per hour near the center of the newly formed tropical cyclone.

During the past week the combination of tropical storm Bill's landfall and a slowly moving frontal system extending from the Midwest to the Northeastern states dropped extreme rainfall from Texas' Gulf coast to the northeastern states. Data from NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) were used in this analysis to estimate the extreme amount of rain that fell during the past seven days. Tropical Storm Bill and it's remnants caused very heavy rainfall while moving through Texas and Oklahoma. Over a foot of rain was reported in Oklahoma resulting in at least two deaths. The

The GPM core observatory satellite had a good daytime look at tropical storm Bill on Wednesday June 17, 1015 at 1552 UTC ( 10:52 AM CDT). GPM saw that an area of heavy rain on Bills northern side was then moving into southern Oklahoma. The Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) on board the satellite measured rain dropping at a rate of over 50 mm (almost 2 inches) per hour in some intense storms. GPM radar data (Ku band) were also used to look at the 3-D structure and storm top heights within storms associated with tropical storm Bill. This image shows that in some areas the dissipating