GPM Monitors Hurricane Matthew Nearing Florida

  • Released Thursday, October 6, 2016
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This data visualization resumes where the visualization "GPM Captures Hurricane Matthew Over Haiti" leaves off. After dissolving away GPM's DPR and GPROF data over Haiti on October 3rd, 2016, we follow Matthew to October 4th as the eye makes landfall over Haiti. GPM's GPROF sweeps in to show the tremendous amounts of rainfall throughout Haiti. We then move forward in time to October 6th as Matthew approaches Florida. Another GPM GPROF swath shows how close the outer bands of precipitation are to the Florida coast. Finally, we move a little further into the same day revealing the massive amounts of rainfall being produced by this storm as it begins to impact Florida.

NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite flew over Hurricane Matthew several times as the category 4 storm headed toward Florida.

The GPM Core Observatory carries two instruments that show the location and intensity of rain and snow, which defines a crucial part of the storm structure – and how it will behave. The GPM Microwave Imager sees through the tops of clouds to observe how much and where precipitation occurs, and the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar observes precise details of precipitation in 3-dimensions.

GPM data is part of the toolbox of satellite data used by forecasters and scientists to understand how storms behave. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Current and future data sets are available with free registration to users from NASA Goddard's Precipitation Processing Center website.

This visualization is the same as above except without colorbars and dates overlayed. (Useful for broadcasters who wish to organize the annotation layout differently.)

Color bar for frozen precipitation rates (ie, snow rates). Shades of cyan represent low amounts of frozen precipitation, whereas shades of purple represent high amounts of precipitation.

Color bar for frozen precipitation rates (ie, snow rates). Shades of cyan represent low amounts of frozen precipitation, whereas shades of purple represent high amounts of precipitation.

Color bar for liquid precipitation rates (ie, rain rates). Shades of green represent low amounts of liquid precipitation, whereas shades of red represent high amounts of precipitation.

Color bar for liquid precipitation rates (ie, rain rates). Shades of green represent low amounts of liquid precipitation, whereas shades of red represent high amounts of precipitation.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio Data provided by the joint NASA/JAXA GPM mission.

This page was originally published on Thursday, October 6, 2016.
This page was last updated on Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 12:08 AM EST.

Missions

This page is related to the following missions:

Series

This page can be found in the following series:

Datasets used

  • [GOES: IR4]

    ID: 33
    Sensor: IR4 Dates used: 09/28/2016 - 10/6/2016
    See all pages that use this dataset

  • Rain Rates (Surface Precipitation) [GPM: GMI]

    ID: 822
    Sensor: GMI Dates used: 10/02/2016 09:01:41 - 10:01:39, 10/03/2016 19:07:02 - 20:39:35Z, 10/4/2016 09:00:04 - 10:32:37Z, 10/6/2016 09:01:40 - 20:01:39Z

    Credit: Data provided by the joint NASA/JAXA GPM mission.

    See all pages that use this dataset

  • Volumetric Precipitation data (Ku) [GPM: DPR]

    ID: 830
    Type: Observed Data Sensor: DPR Collected by: JAXA Dates used: 10/03/2016 19:97:02 - 20:39:35Z

    Credit: Data provided by the joint NASA/JAXA GPM mission.

    See all pages that use this dataset

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