Widespread clouds can easily hide the location of active precipitation. When that happens, well-timed microwave information can show where precipitation is most likely. In the slider example above, Aqua MODIS infrared imagery with a grey-scaled enhancement (collected over Guam just before 0350 UTC on 9 July) shows regions of convection west and south of Guam (circled in yellow). Where are the heaviest rains located, and... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) showed Category 1 Hurricane Beatriz just off the west coast of Mexico (near Ixtapa, station identifier MMZH) as a cloud-filled eye was becoming more apparent.A DMSP-17 Microwave (85 GHz) image at 1322 UTC (below) from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site indicated... Read More

The Himawari-9 Target sector monitored the evolution of Typhoon Mawar from its inception. The animation above (it re-centers occasionally) shows the initial intensification of the system, a brief but notable weakening just prior to moving close to Guam, and then reintensification to the west-northwest of the Marianas. The animation... Read More

Target Sector (2.5-minute interval) JMA Himawari-9 Visible and Infrared images (above) covered the period +/- 2 hours when Super Typhoon Mawar reached Category 5 intensity at 0600 UTC on 25 May 2023. Mesovortices within the eye were evident in Visible imagery, with the eye exhibiting a “stadium effect” geometry (two signatures that are often associated with... Read More