Imagery from the Korean COMS-1 satellite, above, shows Category 3 Typhoon Soudelor approaching the island of Taiwan. The eye appearance becomes ragged at the end of the animation, suggesting entrainment of dry air into the center of the Typhoon. Although Sea Surface Temperatures are warm (image taken from here), strengthening before landfall is not forecast. Life-threatening flooding is likely as the circulation and moisture associated with Soudelor interact with the high terrain on the island of Taiwan (Total Precipitable Water animation from MIMIC).

Suomi NPP overflew Soudelor during the morning of the 7th (1709 UTC on 6 August), and the half-moon illumination allowed the VIIRS Day/Night Band to show impressive outflow in the northern semi-circle of the storm; the 11.45 µm Infrared image, however, shows few cold cloud tops just to the north of the eye.

A closer view of the eye of Typhoon Soudelor is shown below.

The 16-channel animation from Himawari-8 AHI, below, at half-hour time steps from 0000 through 1230 UTC on 7 August, shows plain evidence of dry air at mid-levels increasing with time, first northeast of the storm and later west of the storm (especially in the ‘water vapor’ channels: 6.2 µm, 6.9 µm and 7.3 µm).

About 5 hours prior to landfall on Taiwan, a nighttime comparison of Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) and Infrared (11.45 µm) images at 1653 UTC on 07 August (00:53 AM on 08 August, Taiwan time) is shown below. The images showed a ragged eye structure, but a well-defined spiral band wrapping around the northern semicircle of the typhoon.

According to The Weather Channel, the highest reported gust in Taiwan was 64.0 meters per second (143 mph) at 5 a.m. Taiwan time on 08 August at Su-ao, Yilan County. However, the Central Weather Bureau deleted all wind data for this site, so the accuracy may be in question. The next-highest gust was 58.5 meters per second (131 mph) on the island of Pengjiayu, northeast of mainland Taiwan. The highest reported rainfall total was 1329.0 millimeters (52.32 inches) at Taipingshan, Datong Township, Yilan County, Taiwan, during the 72-hour period from 06 August through 08 August.

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GOES-13 visible (0.63 µm) images (above; click image to play animation; also available as an MP4 movie file) revealed a large amount of ice remaining in southern and eastern portions of Hudson Bay, Canada on 07 August 2015. The ice can be seen “sloshing” back and forth during the day as winds and/or water currents moved it around.

The discrimination of ice vs supercooled water droplet clouds can be made by comparing Terra MODIS true-color and false-color Red/Green/Blue (RGB) images at 1611 UTC (below). On the false-color image, ice (and glaciated clouds with a high concentration of ice crystals at cloud top) appeared as darker shades of red, in contrast to supercooled water droplet clouds which appeared as varying shades of white to cyan.

A Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color image as visualized using the SSEC RealEarth web map server (below) showed the ice at 1800 UTC; even greater detail can be seen in this zoomed-in version of the image.

Maps from from the Canadian Ice Service (below) indicated that the concentration of this thick first-year ice (dark green) was still as high as 9/10ths to 10/10ths (red) on 07 August; on 03 August, the ice concentration departure from normal was as high as +9/10ths to +10/10ths (dark blue) in some locations.

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A sequence of 10-minute interval Himawari-8 true-color Red/Green/Blue (RGB) images covering the period 01 August to 06 August 2015 is shown above (also available as a very large 721 MByte animated GIF, a 66 Mbyte MP4 movie file, or an alternate version here on YouTube). One of the most prominent features seen is Typhoon Soudelor in the West Pacific Ocean, which reached Category 5 Super Typhoon intensity late in the day on 03 August, as indicated in a plot of the Advanced Dvorak Technique intensity estimate from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site (below).

Other features of interest seen during this 6-day animation include hazy-white plumes of urban pollution and/or wildfire smoke streaming eastward off the Asian continent, as well as light brown or tan-colored plumes of blowing dust/sand originating from the interior desert regions.

The Himawari-8 AHI data are provided by the JMA, acquired by NOAA/NESDIS/STAR, and processed at SSEC/CIMSS. The true-color images use information from AHI bands 1, 2, and 3, combined with a customized contrast stretch algorithm. No background image was used.

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The animation above (link) shows two-plus days of 10.35 µm Infrared imagery (from Himawari-8) of Typhoon Soudelor over the western Pacific Ocean. The animation of 2.5-minute interval images is from the Himawari-8 Target Sector that shifts as the Typhoon moves. The animation shows significant strengthening to Category 5 intensity and subsequent weakening as the storm undergoes an eyewall replacement cycle (ERC). That ERC is apparent in the MIMIC morphed microwave imagery, below. In addition, an SST Analysis from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site shows the storm traversing an area of relatively cooler Sea Surface Temperatures. Strengthening is expected in the next days as the storm approaches Taiwan.

A visible animation (0.52 µm, 2.5-minute time steps) from Himawari-8, below, (available here as an mp4, or here on YouTube) during the day on 4 August, shows a relatively clear eye with embedded vortices. In addition, tranverse banding at the cirrus level is obvious.

Suomi NPP overflew Soudelor during the night on 4 August. The toggle between the VIIRS Day/Night Band visible (0.70 µm) image and the Infrared (11.45 µm) image is shown below (courtesy William Straka, SSEC). The three-quarter full moon supplied ample illumination to yield a very crisp visible image at night.

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