Tropical cyclone Giovanna was located in the Indian Ocean east-northeast of Madagascar when it was classified as a tropical storm on 9 Febuary 2012. The TRMM satellite image above shows Giovanna when it was rapidly becoming more powerful on 11 February 2012 at 1200 UTC. Giovanna had intensified to a category 3 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson scale with wind speeds estimated at 100 kts (~115 mph). This TRMM pass shows that an eyewall replacement was occurring at that time. A small ring of strong convective storms was located around the center of the center eye and other powerful storms

Over the weekend, GCPEx had its first large lake effect snow, which put 2 inches down at the CARE site. Chris Kidd, Operations Scientist for GCPEx this week, said in an email, "We were feeling rather poorly done-by at CARE due to the lack of snow there. However, we cheered up as we got back to Barrie [12 miles up the road where the GCPEx team is staying]. About 12+ inches here!" Parking lot at the GCPEx team's hotel in Barrie, Ontario. They were very excited to be buried in a foot of snow. Credit: NASA / Chris Kidd Lake effect snow forms when cold winds pick up moisture and energy as they pass

The TRMM satellite traveled directly above tropical cyclone Jasmine in the south Pacific Ocean on 8 February 2012 at 2156 UTC. Jasmine was classified as a powerful category 4 on the Saffir Simpson Scale with wind speeds of 115 kts (~132 mph) at it's peak intensity but had started to weaken at the time of this pass. Rainfall from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments showed that intense storms in bands around Jasmine's large circular eye were dropping rainfall at a rate of over 50mm/hr (~2 inches). This was a daytime pass so the rainfall analysis was overlaid on