System 94L - NASA Image

NASA Satellite Reveals a Huge “System 94L” Trying to Organize in the Caribbean A large area of low pressure has been lingering in the southern Caribbean since last week and is being monitored for tropical cyclone development. NASA’s Aqua satellite noticed that the showers and thunderstorms associated with the low cover a huge area and there are a lot of strong storms within it. Infrared imagery on June 5 at 18:11 UTC (2:11 p.m. EDT) from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua showed strong convection (rapidly rising air that form the thunderstorms that power a tropical cyclone) in various areas of the low pressure area called “System 94L.” Some of those thunderstorm cloud tops that stretch from Jamaica east to the area south of Puerto Rico are very high and very cold. The strongest cloud top temperatures are as cold as or colder than -63 Fahrenheit / -52 Celsius, which is an indicator of a lot of energy building those high thunderstorms. The AIRS imagery is about 1700 kilometers (1,056 miles) wide, and the showers and thunderstorms associated with System 94L fill up that track from west to east, making this a huge area of low pressure. Interestingly enough, the National Hurricane Center noted that today, June 6, the area of lowest pressure is located about 130 miles south of Grand Cayman, and separate from the strongest thunderstorms. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) noted that this system has a Medium chance of becoming the Atlantic Ocean season’s first tropical storm before the upper level winds start battering it. NHC is planning to send a hurricane hunter into the storm on Tuesday, June 7 to investigate. In the meantime, those strong thunderstorms on AIRS infrared imagery mean heavy rainfall for Haiti and Jamaica. For a look at the development of System 94L, check out NASA’s Hurricane page update on System 93L from last week, when both low pressure areas were in the Caribbean: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2011/h2011_93L.html. Text Credit: Rob Gutro, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.