Tropical Storm Lee’s heavy rainfall map by NASA

storm-lee-rain

NASA has a rain gauge flying in space called TRMM, and data from that satellite has been used to create a map of the massive rainfall generated by landfalling Tropical Storm Lee.

After forming in the north central Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Storm Lee came ashore over south central Louisiana on the morning of Sunday September 4th, 2011. Over the next two and a half days, the slow-moving storm worked its way across central Louisiana and central Mississippi and into northern Alabama, dumping heavy rains along the way. Tropical Storm Lee joined a frontal system to soak the eastern U.S.

The primary mission of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite is to measure rainfall over the global Tropics using a combination of passive microwave and active radar sensors. TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA. For expanded coverage, TRMM can be used to calibrate rainfall estimates from other satellites. Rainfall estimates from the TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are shown here for the period August 31 to September 8, 2011 for the eastern half of the U.S.

TMPA shows heavy rains extending inland from the northern Gulf of Mexico across eastern Louisiana, Mississippi, northwestern Alabama, and into central Tennessee. Rainfall totals in this region generally exceed 100 mm (~4 inches) with some parts of Mississippi and Louisiana receiving upwards of 250 mm (~10 inches) Chattanooga, Tennessee broke their all time 24-hour rainfall total with 9.69 inches.

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