image: NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided a visible-light image of Post-Tropical Cyclone Gert at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 UTC) as it continued to race across the North Atlantic Ocean and merge with another system. The merging system appeared to have a long "tail" of clouds. view more
Credit: Credits: NASA/NOAA GOES Project
Before Hurricane Gert became a post-tropical cyclone, NASA got a look at the rainfall occurring within the storm. After Gert became post-tropical NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured an image as Gert was merging with another system.
The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite provided rainfall information on Hurricane Gert on August 16, 2017 at 5:37 p.m. EDT (2137 UTC). At that time, Gert was a strong category two hurricane with maximum sustained winds of about 93.5 mph (85 knots).
Data from GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument showed that rain was still falling at a rate of more than 2.94 inches (74.7 mm) per hour in a powerful band of storms spiraling around Gert's eastern side. With that pass GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) had a limited encounter with hurricane Gert. DPR did find that rain in storms on the extreme northeastern edge of the hurricane was falling at a rate of up to 2.8 inches (70.3 mm) per hour. In that area storm tops were found by GPM's radar (DPR Ku band) to reach up to 7.5 miles (12.1 km).
At 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, August 17, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued their final advisory on the system and indicated that Gert was post-tropical. Gert was located about 860 miles (1,390 km) east of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Maximum sustained winds had decreased to near 65 mph (100 kph) and were steadily weakening as Gert moved over the cool waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.
NHC Forecaster Zelinsky noted that "the circulation has become quite elongated, and the remaining deep convection appears to be primarily associated with frontal boundaries."
Today, Aug. 18, Gert is forecast to merge with or be absorbed by another extratropical low pressure area.
NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided a visible-light image of Post-Tropical Cyclone Gert at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 UTC) as it continued to race across the North Atlantic Ocean and merge with another system. The merging system appeared to have a long "tail" of clouds along a boundary that stretched into the north central Atlantic Ocean.
The NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland created an image. NOAA manages the GOES series of satellites and the NASA/NOAA GOES Project creates images and animations from the data.
The system is expected to continue to move east toward Europe.
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