This image shows severe thunderstorms over South Carolina as observed from NASA’s ER-2 aircraft flying at 65,000 feet during the Integrated Precipitation and Hydrology Experiment recently.
During the field campaign, NASA's ER-2 research aircraft flew out of Robins Air Force Base in Georgia.
HIWRAP is under the wing in the black compartment; the Cloud Radar System is under the other wing and is not visible; and the EXRAD radar is in the extended nose cone.
Iselle was once a rather powerful category 4 hurricane in the East Pacific with sustained winds estimated at 120 knots (~138 mph) by the National Hurricane Center. Fortunately, a combination of southwesterly wind shear, drier air and cooler waters weakened Iselle considerably as it approached the Hawaiian Islands. Although much weaker, Iselle still struck the southeast Kau coast of the Big Island of Hawaii as a rather strong tropical storm. In fact Iselle, was the strongest and only the 2nd tropical storm to hit the Big Island in over 50 years. The center made landfall around 2:30 am HST
Since December 1997, TRMM and the instruments it carries have provided valuable information to researchers, the applications community, and the public. On July 8, 2014, pressure readings from the fuel tank indicated that TRMM is at the end of its fuel. As a result, NASA has ceased station keeping maneuvers and TRMM has begun its drift downward from its operating altitude of 402 km. A small amount of fuel has been retained to conduct debris avoidance maneuvers to ensure the satellite remains safe during the drift down. TRMM observations will continue as the spacecraft descends to 335 km, at
Hurricane Iselle weakened to a tropical storm while approaching the island of Hawaii on Thursday August 7, 2014. As a tropical storm Iselle contained some heavy rain showers and strong winds when it hit the big island. Iselle later dropped some heavy rain over Maui and scattered showers extended to Kauai and Oahu. The TRMM satellite had an excellent view of tropical storm Iselle as it neared the Hawaiian islands on August 8, 2014 at 0152 UTC ( August 7 at 3:52 PM HST). A rainfall analysis from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments is shown overlaid on a 0200
