Meranti made landfall at Shishi City, which is located in the province of Fujian in southeastern China. Maximum sustained winds at the time of landfall were near 78 mph, making Meranti a Typhoon at the time. It has since weakened back into a tropical storm as it moves inland. It was the tenth typhoon to impact China this season.
TRMM is managed by NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, and provides data on the rates in which rain falls in tropical cyclones (and other weather systems). TRMM passed over Meranti on Sept. 9 at 1155 UTC (7:55 a.m. EDT) and noticed most of the rain falling within the tropical storm was moderate, falling at a rate between 20 and 40 millimeters (.78 to 1.57 inches) per hour. However, there were some areas of rainfall in northwest Taiwan and around Meranti's center with heavy rainfall at up to 2 inches per hour.
Ground observations indicated that Meranti dumped as much as 88 mm (3.5 inches) of rain to Shishi City where it made landfall. Heavy rainfall and gusty winds were also experienced in the neighboring Zhejiang Province. Meranti is forecast to continue weakening as it moves inland.
About 6 hours before TRMM investigated Meranti's rainfall, NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Meranti's extensive cloud cover over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait and back into the South China Sea. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard Terra captured the image at 05:35 UTC (1:35 a.m. EDT).
For more information about how TRMM looks at rainfall, visit NASA's TRMM website at: http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
Text credit: Rob Gutro, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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