The Northern Philippines Island of Luzon suffered yet another direct hit from a super typhoon this season when Super Typhoon Durian (known as "Reming" in the Philippines) made landfall on the southeastern part of the island. The storm came ashore on the 30th of November 2006 with sustained winds reported at 190 kph (118 mph) by the Philippine weather service with gusts to 225 kph (140 mph). Luzon has been hit hard this year. Super Typhoon Xangsane also hit the southern part of the island back on the afternoon (local time) of September 27th. Super Typhoon Cimaron struck northern Luzon on the evening of October 29th, and more recently Typhoon Chebi again hit northern Luzon on November 11th.

The 24th tropical depression of the West Pacific season formed early on the morning of November 26th (local time) south of Guam and became a minimal tropical storm, named Durian, later that same day. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite was placed into its low-earth orbit in November of 1997. Its primary mission is to measure rainfall from space; however, it has also served as a valuable platform for monitoring tropical cyclones, especially over remote parts of the open ocean. TRMM captured these images of Durian as it was making its way across the West Pacific. This first image was taken at 23:24 UTC on 25 November 2006 just before TD #24 became a named tropical storm. The image shows the horizontal distribution of rain intensity looking down on the storm. Rain rates in the center of the swath are from the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR), while those in the outer portion are from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). The rain rates are overlaid on infrared (IR) data from the TRMM Visible Infrared Scanner (VIRS). TRMM reveals that the soon-to-be-named Durian consists of a broad area of light to moderate rain (blue and green areas, respectively). There is no evidence of an eye nor of any banding, indicating that the storm is still in its early formative stages.

Over the next couple of days, Durian continued to track off to the west-northwest taking it into the south-central Philippine Sea. During this period, Durian was slow to intensify and was still a tropical storm on the night of the 27th. Durian finally became a minimal typhoon on the afternoon of the 28th as the storm was beginning to take aim at the central Philippines. On the 29th, Durian intensified significantly and became a super typhoon with maximum sustained winds estimated at 135 knots (155 mph) by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The next image from TRMM was taken at 22:50 UTC 29 November (6:50 am local time) as Durian was bearing down on Catanduanes Island in the central Philippines. Although the center of the storm does fall within the PR swath in this image, it is clear from the TMI that Durian has a well-defined eye surrounded by a symmetric eyewall (green ring). The extreme cyclonic winds in intense storms tend to smear out eyewall features. At the time of this image, Durian was a strong Category 4 typhoon with maximum sustained winds estimated to be 130 knots (150 mph) by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Soon after this image was taken Durian's northern eyewall passed over Virac on the southern tip of Catanduanes Island. The center then made landfall along the south- eastern portion of Luzon in the province of Albay before continuing on westward through the central Philippines.

Images produced by Hal Pierce (SSAI/NASA GSFC) and caption by Steve Lang (SSAI/NASA GSFC).