March 4 0815 UTC (CLICK TO ENLARGE)	March 5 1710 UTC (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
March 6 0802 UTC (CLICK TO ENLARGE)	March 8 0747 UTC (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

The island of Madagascar, which was hit by Cyclone Elita back on the 29th of January, recently suffered a direct hit from Gafilo, a far more powerful storm rated as an intense Category 5 Cyclone at the time it made landfall on the island's northeast coastline. So far Gafilo has left 7 dead, 18 missing and up to 100,000 homeless on Madagascar. Gafilo began as a tropical depression back on the 29th of February 2004 in the central Indian Ocean south of Deigo Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago. Two days later on the 2nd of March, it became a tropical storm and continued moving west. Gafilo strengthened into a Category 1 cyclone the next day on the 3rd, and March 4th saw Gafilo continuing to intensify with winds increasing to 85 knots (98 mph) as estimated by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. On the 5th, Gafilo began a cycle of rapid deepening with winds increasing to 125 knots (144 mph) making it a major Category 4 cyclone. It was now moving west-southwest headed straight for Madagascar. The next day, on the 6th of March 2004, Gafilo struck the northeast coast of Madagascar near to the town of Antalaha as a Category 5 cyclone, the highest possible rating, its sustained winds having further increased to an estimated 140 knots (161 mph). Ninety-five percent of Antalaha was reported destroyed.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite captured numerous, impressive images of Cyclone Gafilo covering most of it's life cycle as it traversed the western Indian Ocean. The first image was taken at 8:15 UTC on 4 March 2004. It shows the horizontal distribution of rain rates as seen from above by the TRMM satellite. Rain rates in the center swath are from the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR), the first and only precipitation radar in space, and rain rates in the outer swath are from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). The rain rates are overlaid on infrared (IR) data from the TRMM Visible Infrared Scanner (VIRS). In this first image, TRMM shows Gafilo to have a large, closed eye but only weak (blues) to moderate (green areas) rain rates immediately surround the center. A large rainband with some embedded heavier convection (darker red areas) wraps in towards the eye from the storm's northwest quadrant. At the time, Gafilo was already rated a Category 1 cyclone with winds estimated at 65 knots (75 mph). The next image taken at 17:10 UTC on March 5 reveals a very different looking Gafilo. The eye has become smaller, and the surrounding eyewall is now composed almost entirely of heavy (reds) to intense (darker reds) rain rates of up to 2-inches per hour. Tropical cyclones act like large heat engines. Their fuel comes from the transformation of water vapor in the atmosphere. As water vapor condenses into the tiny cloud droplets that eventually form the precipitation, heat is released. This heat, known as latent heat, is what drives the storm's circulation. In general, the more heating that occurs, the more intense the storm will become. This heating is most effective in driving the storm if it is occurs near its center as TRMM shows is the case shown here with Gafilo. At this time, Gafilo was a powerful Category 4 storm with winds estimated at 125 knots (144 mph).

The third image was taken at 8:02 UTC March 6th as Gafilo was approaching the coast of Madagascar and shows a tropical cyclone at its most mature, intense stage. The storm now has a very tight, very small eye with a nearly perfectly symmetrical eyewall containing a near-uniform concentric ring of intense rain rates (dark reds). The storm is now at Category 5, and the winds are at 140 knots (161 mph). The final image shows Gafilo in the Mozambique Channel after the storm had crossed the entire northern half of Madagascar. Taken at 7:47 UTC on the 8th, with the circulation having been disrupted by land and topography and its supply of water vapor essentially cutoff, the eye is now totally gone with no visible eyewall present. A large rainband with a broad area of intense (dark reds) to moderate (green areas) rain remains, extending from the central part of the Mozambique Channel eastward into western Madagascar north of the storm's center. Gafilo had now been downgraded to a tropical storm with remaining winds estimated at 55 knots (63 mph).

Gafilo struck the northeast coast of Madagascar early on the morning of the 7th of March 2004 (LST) as a very powerful Category 5 cyclone with winds estimated at 160 mph. So far, at least 25 people have been reported dead on Madagascar not counting a further 111 feared drowned on a ferry that was lost in the storm and reported to have capsized in heavy seas by two survivors. After making landfall on the northeast coast, Gafilo cut across the northern part of the island moving southwest leaving as many as 100,000 people homeless in its wake before re-emerging over the waters of the Mozambique Channel on March 8th. Out over the channel, Gafilo recurved heading southeast. It briefly regaining Category 1 strength over open waters. The storm then made landfall again on the night of the 9th along the southwest coast of Madagascar and crossed the island yet again, this time over the southern part of the island. Gafilo is finally forecast to exit the southeast coastline of Madagascar on the evening of the 11th and head back out into the western Indian ocean as a weak tropical storm.

The TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (MPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center monitors rainfall over the global tropics. MPA rainfall totals are shown for the period 3-10 March 2004 for the area over and around Madagascar. Cyclone symbols mark the 06Z positions of Gafilo along its path. As the storm approaches Madagascar from the east, the heaviest rainfall totals, on the order of 12 inches (orange-red areas), appear close to the center of the storm track. As the systems crosses land, the higher totals appear to the right of the storm track and are on the order of 15 inches of rain (red area) over the northern tip of Madagascar. The heaviest totals of up to 20 inches (darkest reds) stretch from the central Mozambique Channel eastward to along the northwest coastline of Madagascar. These totals appear to be associated with an intense, east-west oriented rainband that was observed by TRMM on March 8 (see the previous story on Gafilo) well north of the storm's center. Rainfall totals are significantly less though still on the order of 4 to 8 inches (green areas) over southern and central Madagascar.

See LARGE [4.2 mb] QUICKTIME ANIMATION of January 27-February 3, 2004 Rainfall accumulation

See SMALLER [.7 mb] QUICKTIME ANIMATION of accumulation

See SMALL [1.3 mb] MPEG ANIMATION of accumulation

Click to see TROPICAL CYCLONE ELITA
which hit Madagascar Twice. (January 29th & February 3, 2004)

TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

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