Starting out as Tropical Storm 02W, Typhoon Neoguri swelled into
the western Pacific Ocean’s first typhoon of 2008 on April 15,
according to Accuweather.com. The storm headed for southern
China, threatening to make landfall later in the week. The
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite collected
the data used to make this image of the typhoon at 4:26 p.m. in
China (8:26 UTC) on April 16, 2008. The nearly opaque white
clouds in this image are from TRMM’s Visible Infrared Scanner.
The color-coded part of the image shows rain rates observed by
two TRMM sensors. The inner swath was observed by TRMM’s
Precipitation Radar, which penetrates into the heart of the
storm. The outer swaths were observed by TRMM’s Microwave
Imager, which detects rainfall at the edges of the storm. The
most intense rainfall amounts appear in red, and the lightest
rainfall areas appear in blue. (As TRMM only observes the
atmosphere (clouds and rainfall), the land and water surfaces
shown in this image are from NASA’s Blue Marb