Typhoon Goni, one of two powerful typhoons brewing in the western North Pacific, brushed the Philippines before heading north in August 2015. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image at 12:30 p.m. local time (0450 Universal Time) on August 21, 2015, as the storm neared the Batanes and Babuyan islands. At the time, Goni was a Category 2 typhoon with sustained winds of 95 knots (110 miles or 175 kilometers per hour).
Satellite data collected by the Global Precipitation Measurement Microwave Imager (GMI) on the GPM satellite showed rain was falling at a rate of over 88 millimeters (3.5 inches) per hour near the storm’s eye when the satellite passed over it on August 20, 2015.
Four people were killed in the Philippine island of Luzon by a landslide caused by Goni’s heavy rain, according to media reports.
References & Resources
- NASA Earth Observatory (2015, August 21) A View Inside Typhoon Atsani.
- NASA Hurricane Page (2015, August 21) Goni. Accessed August 21, 2015.
- The Washington Post (2015, August 20) Can’t stop watching: The mesmerizing Cat 4 typhoons Goni and Atsani in the tropical Pacific. Accessed August 21, 2015.
- Unisys Weather (2015, August 21) 2015 Hurricane/Tropical Data for Western Pacific. Accessed August 21, 2015.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Adam Voiland.
