Skyepony's WunderBlog

Tropical Cyclone Gonu


A storm with near-perfect symmetry and a well-defined eye hovering over the warm waters of the Caribbean or in the South Pacific is not unusual, but Tropical Cyclone Gonu showed up in a rather different place: the Arabian Sea. Though rare, cyclones like Gonu are not unheard of in the northern Indian Ocean basin. Most cyclones that form in the region form over the Bay of Bengal, east of India. Those that take shape over the Arabian Sea, west of the Indian peninsula, tend to be small and fizzle out before coming ashore. Cyclone Gonu was a rare exception. According to storm statistics maintained on Unisys Weather, the last storm of this size to form over the Arabian Sea was Cyclone 01A, which tracked northwest along the coast of India between May 21 and May 28, 2001. Unlike Gonu’s forecasted track, Cyclone 01A’s path never brought it ashore.

At 9:35 a.m. local time (06:35 UTC) on June 5, 2007, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image, Tropical Cyclone Gonu was approaching the northeastern shore of Oman. At this time, the powerful storm had reached a dangerous Category 4 status. Sustained winds were measured at 250 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour) according to the University of Hawaii’s Tropical Storm Information Center, at the time of this MODIS image. The storm has the hallmark tightly wound arms that spiral around a well-defined, circular eye. The eye is surrounded by a wall of towering clouds that cast shadows on the surrounding clouds. Called hot towers, these clouds are a sign of the powerful uplift that feeds the storm. The symmetrical spirals, distinct eye, and towering clouds are all features regularly seen in satellite images of other particularly powerful cyclones, which are also known as typhoons or hurricanes when they form in other parts of the world.

The forecast as of June 5 called for the storm to graze Oman’s shore, but with the center of the storm staying offshore in the Gulf of Oman. The storm’s first landfall was predicted to be in southern Iran. The cooler water along the Oman coast was expected to rob the storm of some of its intensity, and it was predicted to strike the Iranian coast at around Category 1 strength. If, however, the forecast track is not quite right and the storm stays farther from shore over shallower and much warmer waters in the Gulf of Oman, it could make landfall while still packing Category 3 winds. In either case, communities along the Gulf of Oman are poorly prepared for hurricanes, given their rarity, and severe damage to cities and oil platforms is possible due to winds and storm surge.

The high-resolution image provided above is at MODIS’ full spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.

You can download a 250-meter-resolution Cyclone Gonu KMZ file for use with Google Earth.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

Skye, I hope you are as comfortable as can be and I look forward to you returning as soon as you are ready. :^)

Doing my best to clog the blog in her absence!☺

No seriously, I hope you are feeling better soon Skye and enjoy the images on your return.

hello Skye...be safe girl!!!

Latest MIMIC showing Gonu 's impact on Oman.Link

Member Since: July 3, 2005 Posts: 370 Comments: 111273

Hey Skye! Wow, it's really blooming there.. hope it is all beneficial.

Just discovered TRMM, here is another of Gonu for the archives


Image courtesy NASA

RARE CYCLONE BRUSHES ARABIAN PENINSULA

At one time Cyclone Gonu was a powerful Category 5 storm packing sustained winds of 160 mph, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and on a course for Oman. This made it the most powerful cyclone ever to threaten the Arabian Peninsula since record keeping began back in 1945. Fortunately the storm weakened significantly by the time it brushed the far eastern tip of Oman.

Tropical cyclones do on occasion form in the Arabian Sea, but they rarely exceed tropical storm intensity. Last year, Tropical Storm Mukda was the only system to form in the region, and it remained well out to sea before dissipating. Gonu became a tropical storm on the morning (local time) of 2 June 2007 in the east-central Arabian Sea. After some initial fluctuations in direction, the storm settled on a northwesterly track and began to intensify. Gonu went from tropical storm intensity on the morning of the the 3rd to Category 2 on the night of the 3rd. By daybreak on the 4th, Gonu was up to a Category 4 storm with winds estimated at 115 knots (132 mph).



The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite was placed into low-earth orbit in November of 1997 with the primary mission of measuring rainfall from space; however, it has also proven to be a valuable platform for monitoring tropical cyclones, especially over remote parts of the open ocean. TRMM captured this image of Gonu as it was moving northwest through the central Arabian Sea. The image was taken at 03:23 UTC on 4 June 2007. It 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 the tell tale signs of a potent storm. Not only does Gonu have a complete, well-formed, symmetrical eye surrounded by an intense eyewall (innermost red ring), this inner eyewall is surrounded by a concentric outer eyewall (outermost red and green ring). This double eyewall structure only occurs in very intense storms. Eventually the outer eyewall will contract and replace the inner eyewall.



The next image shows a unique 3D perspective of Gonu using data collected from the TRMM PR from the same overpass as the previous image. Higher radar echo tops are indicated in red. The areas of intense rain in the previous image are associated with deep convective towers both in the innermost eyewall and in parts of outer eyewall. The inner ring has the higher tops at this time. Deep convective towers near the storm's center can be a precursor to future strengthening as they indicate that large amounts of heat are being released into the storm's core. At the time of these images Gonu was a Category 4 cyclone. Several hours after these images were taken, Gonu reached Category 5 intensity.

The system finally began to weaken during the night of the 4th and was downgraded to a Category 3 storm at 12:00 UTC on the 5th. Gonu continued to weaken as it neared the coast of Oman. The center remained just offshore of the northeast coast of Oman as a Category 1 storm before turning northward towards Iran where it is expected to make landfall as a tropical storm.

Click to see a Quicktime animation (1.8MB) of Tropical Cyclone GONU FADE between visible and rainfall images.
Click to see an MPEG animation (.7MB) of Tropical Cyclone GONU FADE between visible and rainfall images.
Click to see a Quicktime 3-D FLYBY animation (37B) of Tropical Cyclone GONU from Precipitation Radar.
Click to see a MPEG 3-D FLYBY animation (1.5MB) of Tropical Cyclone GONU from Precipitation Radar.

TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA. Images produced by Hal Pierce (SSAI/NASA GSFC) and caption by Steve Lang (SSAI/NASA GSFC).

Lil over 50 Hours to Launch Skyepony.You going to shoot the launch?

It came right down to the last hour, but late this afternoon, NASA cleared the shuttle Atlantis for launch on Friday.
NASA said they are worried about the current weather.

"If it hails again, we'd be so unlucky," said launch Director Mike Leinbach.
Pounding rain carries the threat of hail.

Another hailstorm would keep NASA's impressive streak of bad luck alive, and even if there's no damage, it would kick off such an extensive round of safety inspections that the launch could be delayed.
Never before has a shuttle taken off with so much damage to its tank, speckled with 4,000 patches from the February hailstorm.

"We're ready to go," said Leinbach.

Didn't you have pics of this hailstorm Skye? ... and, YIPES!?

Awesome TRMM animations Rainman.

{{Skye}}

good morning Skye, hope everything is good and you are feeling better!

Skye - we did get a nice drenching last night. Thanks for stopping by.

Its great being green:)

Did you see the launch?

Pic of Launch!

COOL MySpace Comments

{{SKYE}} I love your blog!! Thank you for all of the great info! I live on the central west coast, in Hernando county. I watch your blog for weather info, everyday! If you can, please keep me up to date! Thanks sooo much!!

Have a wonderful night, and awesome weekend!!

Been waiting! glad you got the pics up.. great shot from the front yard!

Skye, Nice shuttle shot!

Thanks Rain for pointing that out - I completely missed the picture!!

hey Skye...

is that on the United Launch Alliance site you gave me???

never mind just looked and it is...

Just noticed your shuttle photos...awesome.

Good Morning {{Skye}}!

Skye, love your pic "An Hour After Launch" very neat!

Morning Skye enjoy the day:)