Hurricane Danielle's Hot Towers

NASA's TRMM spacecraft allows us to look under Hurricane Danielle's clouds to see the rain structure on August 27, 2005 at 06:46 UTC or 2:46 EDT. At this time, Hurricane Danielle was a powerful Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale with sustained winds of 115 knots (132 mph). An area of deep convective towers (shown in red) is prominently visible in the center of the storm. These tall towers are the key to Danielle's intensification. They are associated with the strong thunderstorms responsible for the areas of intense rain seen in the previous image. These storms within a storm are releasing vast amounts of heat into the core of Danielle. This heating, known as latent heating, is what is driving the storm's circulation and intensification. This animation shows infrared data from TRMM's Visible Infrared Scanner (VIRS) sensor above a thinner swath from TRMM's Precipitation Radar (PR). TRMM reveals that Danielle now has a well-formed eye surrounded by sharply curved rainbands—all signs of mature storm with an intense circulation. TRMM also reveals that there are very powerful thunderstorms in Danielle's eye wall dropping extreme amounts of rain.