GOES Satellite Movie Captures Extra-tropical Storm Ida Raining on U.S. Southeast

This afternoon, most of Ida's rains extend to the north and east of her center, over Alabama, Georgia, South and North Carolina.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-12 has been providing meteorologists with satellite imagery of Ida's progression, and the NASA GOES Project created an animation showing Ida's progress.

The GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. uses the data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental (GOES) satellites to create images and movies. In this case, GOES-12 provided the data to make a movie of Ida's movements from November 8 to 10 at 19:45 UTC (2:45 p.m. ET).

At 2:30 p.m. ET today, November 10, the low pressure center of Extra-tropical Storm Ida is currently over the western tip of the Florida panhandle and is beginning to move east. The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center issued a graphic indicating extreme rainfall on their website that indicates the area where North Carolina and South Carolina meet the northeast corner of Georgia and extreme southeast corner of Tennessee.

At 10 a.m., Ida's center was near 30.6 North and 87.6 West or 30 miles east-southeast of Mobile, Alabama and 25 miles west-northwest of Pensacola, Florida. At that time, Ida had sustained winds near 35 mph, and the storm was weakening. Ida was moving northeast near 9 mph and had a minimum central pressure near 1000 millibars.

At 10 a.m. ET, Ida became extra-tropical. A conversion to “extra-tropical” status means that the area of low pressure, in this case Ida, eventually loses its warm core and becomes a cold-core system. During the time it is becoming extra-tropical the cyclone's primary energy source changes from the release of latent heat from condensation (from thunderstorms near the storm's center) to baroclinic (temperature and air pressure) processes. When a cyclone becomes extra-tropical it will usually connect with nearby fronts and or troughs (extended areas of low pressure) consistent with a baroclinic (pressure) system. When that happens it appears the system grows larger while the core weakens.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) used satellite and surface observations to confirm Ida's transition to extra-tropical status. This morning's NHC discussion noted “the latest satellite imagery shows a comma-like appearance and temperature data from Dauphin Island showed a 5F temperature decrease after the center passed this morning.”

Ida is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 3 to 6 inches…with isolated maximum storm totals of 8 inches…through Wednesday evening from the eastern Gulf coast across the southeastern U.S. into the southern mid-Atlantic states.

Text credit: Rob Gutro, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center