TRMM

Link to image of Typhoon Maemi TRMM pass

link to images showing Typhoon Maemi Rainfall

MAEMI STRIKES SOUTH KOREA

After churning through the western Pacific for the past week, Typhoon Maemi came ashore west of Pusan, South Korea as the strongest typhoon to ever hit the coast of South Korea. With winds of 135 mph, Maemi inflicted heavy damage on Korea, capsizing fishing vessels and toppling cranes. The heavy rains from Maemi also led to landsides and flooding. In all, at least 115 people were either missing or had died in the storm.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite provided valuable images of Maemi from its organization as a minimal typhoon well east of the Philippines to a super typhoon with winds over 155 mph as it was approaching the southern Ryuku Islands. TRMM continued to monitor Maemi through its impact on the southeast coast of South Korea. The first image provides a snapshot of Maemi just after it made landfall on the Korean penisula. Taken at 12:24 UTC on 12 September 2003, it shows rainfall rates from the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR) and TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) overlaid on Infrared (IR) data from the VIRS. A complete eye is no longer visible as the circulation interacts with and is disrupted by the topography. Instead this interaction leads to extremely heavy rainfall north of the center with a large area of greater than 2 inch per hour rates (darker red areas). At the time of the image, Maemi was classified as a Category 2 typhoon with winds of 105 mph.

The next image shows rainfall totals from the TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (MPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for the period 8-13 September 2003. Areas along the southern coast of Korea are seen to have received upwards of 12 inches of rainfall (red areas) while nearly all of the rest of South Korea received over 4 inches. Tropical cyclone symbols mark the positions of Meami every 6 hours.

See LARGE [1.6 mb] QUICKTIME ANIMATION of September 8-13 Rainfall accumulation See SMALLER [.3 mb] QUICKTIME ANIMATION of accumulation See MEDIUM 3-D [.8 mb] MPEG ANIMATION of accumulation