NASA released animations taken from space of the Christmas tornadoes that ripped across Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana as well as storm systems that threatened the U.S. gulf coast.
When the storm hit, NASA's RapidScat captured data on winds while NOAA's GOES satellite tracked its movement, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center reported.
"NASA's RapidScat instrument flies aboard the International Space Station and captured a look at some of the high winds from the storms that brought severe weather to the U.S. Gulf Coast," NASA stated.
The images show an animation of wind movements that occurred between Dec. 21 and 24. RapidScat spotted winds as fast as 67.1 miles per hour off the southeastern gulf of Texas on Dec. 23 as Mississippi was experiencing ferocious tornadoes. On Dec. 24, winds of the same speed were seen near south central Louisiana and east of Mobile Bay, Alabama. NASA also created an animation of visible and infrared satellite data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite that showed the development of the unseasonable weather system. This data allowed researchers to show the entire movement of the Christmas storm system.
To create the images and the video, NASA/NOAA's GOES Project takes the cloud data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite and overlays it over true-color images gathered by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that is located aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.
"NOAA's GOES-East satellite sits in a fixed orbit in space capturing visible and infrared imagery of weather over the eastern U.S. and Atlantic Ocean. The GOES-East satellite is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland created the animation of GOES-East satellite data that covered the period during the severe weather," NASA noted.
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