Last week's flooding and tornadoes caused the reported deaths of at least 18 people in Oklahoma. Today extensive flooding from heavy rainfall occurred in Missouri when a levee was breached. The TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center was used in this analysis to show rainfall over these areas. TRMM with its combination of passive microwave and active radar sensors was used to calibrate rainfall estimates from other satellites. TMPA rainfall totals are shown here for the 21-day period from May 14 to June 4, 2013. Heavy rainfall is shown extending from Texas to the Great Lakes. This analysis indicates that the heaviest rainfall totals of over 450mm (~17.8 inches) were associated with the extreme rainfall extending from central Oklahoma through central Arkansas.

Tornadoes were reported in the states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and North Dakota last Friday May 31, 2013. The TRMM satellite passed above the round of tornado spawning thunderstorms that were over Oklahoma last Friday night. This TRMM pass on June 1 at 0450 UTC (May 31 at 11:50 PM CDT) showed that very powerful storms were still continuing late into the evening. TRMM's Precipitation Radar (PR) found several storms in this line reaching heights of over 16.5km (~10.3 miles) with rain falling at over 291mm/hr (~11.5 inches). TRMM PR found radar reflectivity values of over 64dBZ in one powerful storm.

This animation reveals the range of strong radar reflectivity values returned to the satellite from extremely heavy rain showers. Click on this animation to see a higher resolution quicktime animation.