TRMM

Satellite View	Vertical Slice Through The Eye
(click to zoom)	(click to zoom)

HURRICANE CLAUDETTE

Claudette, the first hurricane of the 2003 Atlantic season, came ashore along the central Texas coast Tuesday morning near Port O'Connor. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite captured an image of Hurricane Claudette at 6:53 am CDT (11:53 UTC) on July 15th just hours before it made landfall. It shows that Claudette had become much better organized as it neared the coast with a closed eye. The brighter white areas (outer portions of swath) show the rain pattern and heavier rainfall amounts estimated by the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). The green, yellow and red colors (inner swath) represent increasing rain intensity as seen by the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR). At the time, Claudette's winds were estimated to be 75 mph by the National Hurrican Center (NHC). Also shown is an east-west cross section through the eye of the storm taken by the PR while GOES IR data shows the three dimensional cloud perspective.

See a Large QUICKTIME ANIMATION of Rainfall accumulation See SMALLER QUICKTIME ANIMATION See SMALLER MPEG ANIMATION

After coming ashore, Claudette brought strong gusty winds to the region as well as heavy rainfall. The TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (MPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center shows rainfall totals along the path of Claudette varying from 4 to 6 inches, with locally heavier amounts, along and near the coast to just 2 to 4 inches across a broad area of south central Texas. These values are in general agreement with local ground-based radar estimates. The heaviest rainfall totals by far occurred over the central Gulf of Mexico where the MPA shows a wide area of 12 inches or more (darker reds). This was caused by the slow forward motion as Claudette became nearly stationary for a while over the central part of the gulf. However, once Claudette resumed its westward motion it continued to maintain a forward speed of between 10 and 14 mph well inland helping to keep rainfall totals down.

Link to images of Hurricane Claudette rainfall contour analysis

July 9-16 Rainfall Accumulation Contours for Hurricane Claudette (click to enlarge)

July 15, 0700 UTC TMI & Precipitation Radar image of Hurricane Claudette (CLICK for more)	July 14, 1249 UTC TMI & Precipitation Radar image of Tropical Storm Claudette (CLICK for more)
July 13, 0714 UTC Tropical Storm Claudette (CLICK for more)	July 10, 0646 UTC Tropical Storm Claudette (CLICK for more)