Tropical Cyclones

Forecasters predicted an above-normal hurricane season for 2020. They weren’t wrong. As the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season smashed records with an unprecedented 30 named storms , NASA’s Earth Applied Sciences Disasters Program stood up to the challenge. The Disasters Program helps leaders and responders at national, regional, and local levels leverage NASA’s technology and expertise to assess, predict, and understand disasters' impacts. The Disasters Program targets a wide range of hazards and disasters , and while NASA is not an operational response agency, the agency offers access to unique

NASA combined data from multiple satellites to estimate the rainfall from Tropical Cyclone Ana in the Southwest Pacific Ocean amid an ongoing Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) event. The Madden-Julian Oscillation is a 20 to 90 day pattern of alternating wet and dry conditions that often begins in the tropical Indian Ocean and moves eastward into the Pacific. This animation shows rainfall rates (blue/yellow shading) and rainfall accumulations (green shading) at half-hourly intervals from January 26 - February 2, 2021, using NASA's IMERG algorithm, overlaid on shades of white/gray from NOAA

On November 22, 2020, Cyclone Gati became the strongest storm to hit Somalia since satellite records began five decades ago. Gati made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 170 kilometers (105 miles) per hour, a category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale . The storm brought more than a year’s worth of rain to the region in two days. Local authorities report at least eight people were killed and thousands have been displaced. The map above shows rainfall accumulation from November 21-23, 2020. These data are remotely-sensed estimates that come from the Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals

The record-breaking 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, aided by the ongoing La Niña, is officially the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record, surpassing the 2005 season in the total number of named storms with 30 to date. Incredibly, the latest storm Iota wasn’t just another named storm, but a powerful Category 5 hurricane and the strongest storm of the season. It was also only the 2 nd Category 5 storm to occur in the month of November on record, the other being in 1932. The warm waters of the Caribbean continue to serve as a breeding ground for late-season storms this season. Iota

After a long and meandering journey over Central America, across central Cuba, and through the Florida Keys, Eta, the 28th named storm and 12th hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, wound up nearly stationary as a moderate tropical storm in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico just north of the western tip of Cuba on the morning of November 10th. Before long however, a deep layer trough located over the western third of the US began to shift eastward, and by the afternoon of the 10th, it started to pull Eta back towards the north and the west coast of the Florida peninsula. As it did so

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

As Hurricane Zeta moves towards landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast, NASA has eyes on the storm with an array of Earth-observing instruments and stands ready to aid affected communities with critical data and analysis. Zeta is following a path similar to Hurricane Delta, which after crossing the Yucatan Peninsula made its way across the Gulf of Mexico and struck the Louisiana coast as a Category 2 hurricane on October 9. If Zeta makes landfall as expected along the northern Gulf Coast, it will become the 7th named storm to do so in this record-breaking season, following Tropical Storm Cristobal

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will go down as one of the most active seasons on record, currently second only to the incredible 2005 season in terms of the number of named storms. The 2020 season is only the second time in recorded history (the other being 2005) that the Greek alphabet has been used because the number of named storms has exceeded the number of regular names on the list. Another interesting aspect of the 2020 season has been the number of storms that have struck the northern Gulf Coast. So it is no surprise that the latest storm, Hurricane Delta, would also find its way to