Widespread flooding has recently caused the deaths of dozens of people in southern Thailand. Frequent and persistent downpours have resulted in record rainfall totals.

NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) were used to estimate the total amount of rain that fell over southern Thailand during the past week. Extreme rainfall totals of over 700 mm (27.6 inches) were shown over the Gulf of Thailand. The highest rainfall total estimates over land were greater than 500 mm (19.7 inches) on the eastern coast of the Malay Peninsula in the Bang Saphan district.

Rainfall has greatly increased over Thailand during this La Nina year. Very low rainfall totals occurred over Thailand during last year's El Nino event. The rainfall anomaly analysis shown above was made by comparing TRMM calibrated rainfall climatology to "near real-time" Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA-RT 3B42RT) data collected over a thirty day period. The panel on the left shows rainfall departure from normal during the 2016 El Nino event. The second panel shows the extreme increase in normal rainfall over southern Thailand during the current La Nina event. The TRMM satellite produced over 17 years of precipitation measurements that were a valuable contribution to global rainfall climatology.

IMERG rainfall totals have been adjusted to reflect observed values in other similar extreme rainfall events.