Tropical Depression ALEX hits Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula
Visualizations by
Lori Perkins
Released on June 29, 2010
NASA's TRMM spacecraft observed this view of Tropical Depression Alex on June 27, 2010 at 2214 UTC (6:14 PM EST). Tropical depression Alex was near the western coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Alex had weakened and wasn't dropping the very heavy rainfall that had occurred a day earlier causing deadly flooding. At the time of this image, Alex had winds estimated at 35 knots (~40.3 mph) and a pressure reading of 991 mb. The rain structure is taken by TRMM's Tropical Microwave Imager (TMI) and TRMM's Precitation Radar (PR) instruments. The clouds are taken by TRMM's visible-infrared radiometer (VIRS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-13) infrared instrument. TRMM looks underneath of the storm's clouds to reveal the underlying rain structure. The colored isosurface under the clouds show the rain seen by the PR instrument. Areas of extremely heavy rainfall are colored in red. Heavy rainfall are colored in yellow, moderate rainfall are colored in green, and light rain are in blue.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0