image: This image of Tropical Storm Chris was taken at 23:25 UTC (7:25 p.m. EDT) Aug. 1 by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. Chris was about to pass to the northeast of Barbuda in the Caribbean. The image shows how strong rain is falling from one end of the storm to the other. Rain rates are observed from two different instruments on TRMM. In the center of Chris, they are from the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR), and in the outer swath they are from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). The area of rain is fairly compact and shows that Chris is a rather small storm. Chris' center is still poorly defined in this image with no evidence of an eye. Banding features (curvature) are also not well defined at this stage as the circulation is still in the process of getting organized. There are, however, areas of moderate rain (bright green to orange areas) near the center of Chris. At the time of this image, Chris was a moderate tropical storm with maximum sustained winds reported at 50 knots (58 mph) by the National Hurricane Center. TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA. view more
Credit: Image Credit: NASA/JAXA/SSAI, Hal Pierce. Caption: Steve Lang, SSAI/NASA