NASA captures Isaias bringing heavy rains to the Northern Bahamas

Data visualization of the 2020 Hurricane Season. Starts on May 1, 2020 just showing Sea Surface Temperatures and cloud cover. Precipitation data then dissolves in as hurricanes are tracked throughout 2020. Hurricane tracks include Hurricane strengths depicted with the letter s respective strength. The visualization then culminates by showing all the storm tracks at once.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season smashed records with an unprecedented 30 named storms, marking the fifth year in a row with above-average hurricane activity. The National Weather Service noted that every mile of the U.S. Atlantic coast was under a tropical watch or warning in 2020. NOAA reported the most billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. in a single year in the 40 years of record-keeping, with significant contributions from the five storms that made landfall in the U.S.This visualization shows the hurricanes and tropical storms of 2020 as seen by NASA’s Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) - a data product combining precipitation observations from infrared and microwave satellite sensors united by the GPM Core Observatory. IMERG provides near real-time half-hourly precipitation estimates at ~10km resolution for the entire globe, helping researchers better understand Earth’s water cycle and extreme weather events, with applications for disaster management, tracking disease, resource management, energy production and food security. IMERG rain rates (in mm/hr) are overlaid on infrared cloud data from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Cloud Composite dataset together with storm tracks from the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting (ATCF) model. Sea surface temperatures (SST) are also shown over the oceans, derived from the NASA Multi-sensor Ultra-high Resolution (MUR) dataset, which combines data from multiple geostationary and orbiting satellites. Sea surface temperatures play an important role in hurricane formation and development, with warmer temperatures linked to more intense storms. 2020 was the warmest year on record, and this year’s hurricane season brought many examples of storms that intensified quickly: ten of the 30 named storms showed rapid intensification. Sea Surface Temperature colorbar focusing primarily on temperatures between 20 degrees Celsius to 30 Celsius. 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 frozen precipitation rates (ie, snow rates). Shades of cyan represent low amounts of frozen precipitation, whereas shades of purple represent high amounts of precipitation. Date overlay Single image layer showing all the tracks fully visible. Animated Hurricane track layer. Animated precipitation layer. Animated cloud layer. Base layer for this data visualization. This layer shows sea surface temperatures throughout the time of the 2020 Hurricane Season.

Halloween is scarier with Hubble! What looks like two glowing eyes and a crooked carved smile is a snapshot of the early stages of a collision between two galaxies. This new image is just one of several spooky views Hubble has captured in the universe.For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble. Credit: NASA by Donn Wilkerson [BMI] via Killer Tracks [BMI] and Universal Production MusicAdditional Credits:Video of Pumpkin by ArtbeatsSound Effect Credits:Horror Hit by PashaStrikerScart Wobbling Effect by JiltedGEvil Gnome Laugh by WARP EFX Master VersionHorizontal version. This is for use on any YouTube or non-YouTube platform where you want to display the video horizontally. Vertical VersionThis vertical version of the episode is for IGTV or Snapchat. The IGTV episode can be pulled into Instagram Stories and the regular Instagram feed.

This data visualization shows Tropical Storm Isaias stretching across the United States East Coast on the morning of August 4th, 2020. This storm system caused major flooding and damage up and down the entire eastern seaboard.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. After regaining hurricane intensity over the Gulf Stream, Hurricane Isaias made landfall on the south coast of North Carolina on Monday August 3rd at 11:10 pm EDT near Ocean Isle Beach. This data visualization shows Isaias as is makes its way northward from the Bahamas to the coast of North Carolina using NASA’s IMERG rainfall product. With IMERG, precipitation estimates from the GPM core satellite are used to calibrate precipitation estimates from microwave and IR sensors on other satellites to produce half-hourly precipitation maps at 0.1 degrees horizontal resolution. After making landfall, Isaias continued tracking northward over eastern North Carolina in response to a large upper-level trough located over the eastern half of the US.It was at this time that Isaias was again overflown by the GPM core satellite at 8:51 UTC (4:51 am EDT) on the morning of Tuesday August 4th, as shown in the second part of the data visualization. Here rainfall rates derived directly from the GPM Microwave Instrument (or GMI) and Dual-Polarization Radar (or DPR) provide a detailed look at Isaias, which at the time was still a strong tropical storm with sustained winds reported at 70 mph by the National Hurricane Center. GPM clearly shows the center of circulation over northeastern North Carolina, which at the time was just southeast of Roanoke Rapids, NC, with a large eye that is open on the southern side. Amazingly, despite the center being located down in North Carolina, GPM shows a large rain shield extending from North Carolina all the way into New England to the Canadian border as a result of the storm’s counterclockwise circulation drawing abundant moisture off the Atlantic and over land where the combination of an old frontal boundary and the Appalachian terrain squeeze out this moisture to form large amounts of precipitation ahead of the storm, which is then drawn further northward by southerly flow aloft from the upper-level trough.GPM data is archived at https://pps.gsfc.nasa.gov/ 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.