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| GOES-13 satellite image: Lee over eastern US, Katia offshore |
Here's today's hurricane update that I wrote for the NASA Hurricane page www.nasa.gov/hurricane on Tropical Storm Lee, still raining on us along the East coast! As of 3:30pm EDT on Sept. 7, Bowie, Maryland has received just over 5" of rain (it topped our new rain gauge) and the rains continue!
Lee's Remnants Continue to Drench the Eastern U.S.
Landfalling tropical cyclones can bring a lot of rain, but after Lee made
landfall and merged with a stalled frontal system over the eastern U.S. the rain
keeps coming. Lee's clouds, however, continue to remain painfully out of reach
of Texas, that needs the rain to battle several wildfires. One NASA satellite
image showed how close but how far that needed rain was from the Lone Star
State, while another showed the extent of Lee's cloud cover merged with a front.
As of today, Sept. 7, 2011, there has been one change with Lee's
remnants. According to NOAA's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC), "the
surface circulation of Lee has been absorbed by a large scale extratropical low
to the north and that means heavy rains and flooding expected from the central
Appalachians into parts of New England."
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| 5" of rain from Lee in Bowie, Md. by 9/7@3:30pmET |
When NASA's Aqua satellite flew
over the central U.S. on Sept. 6, 2011 at 3:23 p.m. EDT it captured a visible
image from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard. The image
showed several plumes of smoke from the fires raging in Texas and a rounded mass
of clouds just out of reach to the east, from the remnants of Tropical Storm
Lee, which delivered only gusty winds to Texas and fanned the flames. Lee's
rainfall remained to the east of the Texas fires.
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| Tom's newly planted Ivy in a puddle |
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| Soggy backyard.... |
**Our friend Craig sent us pictures of Historic Downtown Ellicott City,Md. taken this afternoon, Wed. September 7th, 2011. The flooding from Lee's heavy rainfall has covered the main roadways. See photos.
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| Ellicott City, Md flooding from Lee 9/7/11 |
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| Ellicott City, Md. Flooding from Lee 9/7/11 |
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| High water even at the TOP of the hill, Ellicott City, MD |
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| Looking up the hill from flooded Ellicott City, Md. |
Today, NOAA's
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13 captured a
visible image of the clouds associated with tropical Storm Lee's remnants, and a
warm front along the U.S. East coast. The image also shows Hurricane Katia
threatening the eastern U.S. in the Atlantic. The two systems seem to be acting
against each other. Lee's remnants are keeping Katia away from a mainland
landfall, while Katia is preventing Lee's remnants from moving east and
off-shore.
Finding Lee's surface circulation today, Sept. 7 is not
possible because Lee's circulation was absorbed by a large scale extratropical
low pressure area near the Tennessee/Virginia border. One other factor coming
into play and keeping the U.S. east coast wet is a warm front draped across the
Mid-Atlantic states bringing in warm, moist air from the Atlantic Ocean. It's
causing heavy rainfall from southern New England to the central Appalachian
mountains, and it is expected to stick around for the next couple of days. The
HPC expects it to dissipate slowly by the week's end. Additional rainfall can
range between 4 to 8 inches with isolated totals up to 10 inches until then.
Text credit: Rob Gutro,
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
MORE INFORMATION: www.nasa.gov/hurricane
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