Madagascar: Tropical Cyclone Enawo
Madagascar! A small country located in Africa, just east of Mozambique was hit by Tropical Cyclone Enawo making landfall today, 7 March 2017. Right before landfall the tropical cyclone was near ‘Category 4 status’ with winds approximately 145 mph. It was the strongest landfall in 13 years. The storm will bring heavy precipitation and flooding to the country.
To aid in monitoring this storm, one can use the Day/Night Band (DNB) that utilizes a sun/moon reflectance model to monitor tropical storms, observe atmospheric features, sense emitted lights and assist with cloud monitoring during the nighttime. A static Day/Night Band (DNB) image of the cyclone at 2146Z, 6 March 2017 can be seen below in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The DNB highlighting the location of the Tropical Cyclone Enawo at 2146Z, 6 March 2017, just northeast of the country of Madagascar. The DNB can observe atmospheric features such as lightning, clouds and the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Enawo. DNB can also sense anthropogenic lights (i.e. emitted city lights) in Madagascar and from neighboring islands east of Madagascar. In the top-right corner of the image, the moon percent visibility and moon elevation angle are also provided.
For the latest updates on Tropical Cyclone Enawo click here.