Cyclone Maila rapidly intensifies to a Category 4 storm near the Soloman Islands
10-minute Himawari-9 Infrared (10.4 µm) images, from 0000 UTC on 07 April to 0000 UTC on 08 April [click to play animated GIF]
A 2.5-minute Himawari-9 Target Sector was positioned over Maila until 1449 UTC — which provided a smoother depiction of the evolution of Maila’s eye during rapid intensification (below). The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were -90ºC and colder (yellow pixels embedded within dark purple areas) — for example, at 0107 UTC and 0912 UTC. No -90ºC pixels were seen in the 10-minute Full Disk scan Infrared images, highlighting the value of 2.5-minute Target Sector imagery for capturing subtle details.
2.5-minute Himawari-9 Infrared (10.4 µm) images, from 0002-1449 UTC on 07 April [click to play animated GIF]
Himawari-9 Infrared (11.2 µm) images with an overlay of streamlines and contours of deep-layer wind shear at 2100 UTC
Microwave imagery from DMSP-18 (below) displayed the eyewall structure of Maila — which was partially eroded along its eastern edge at that time.
DMSP-18 SSMIS Microwave (85 GHz) image at 1749 UTC on 07 April
A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image from RCM-3 (below) sampled wind speeds as high as 118 kts in the NW quadrant of Maila.
RCM-3 SAR wind image at 1914 UTC on 07 April [click to enlarge]
VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) images from NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 (mislabeled by AWIPS as NPP) [click to enlarge]