Super Typhoon Rammasun Strikes the Southern Coast of China

Super typhoon Rammasun struck the southern coast of China on Friday July 18th as a very powerful super typhoon with sustained winds estimated at 135 knots (~155 mph or equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane on the US Saffir-Simpson scale), making it the strongest typhoon to hit the area in several decades. Rammasun made landfall at 3:30 pm (local time) on Hainan Island where the southern half of the intense eye wall raked across the northeast tip of that island. The center then quickly cut across the Qiongzhou Strait separating Hainan from the Leizhou Peninsula to the north. The right half of the storm then impacted the southern part of Leizhou Peninsula, which is located in the southwest corner of Guangdong province. Rammansun re-emerged over the Gulf of Tonkin slightly weaker before making its final landfall in China on the coast of Guangxi province near the border with Vietnam.

Super Typhoon Rammasun Strikes the Southern Coast of China

TRMM, which has been collecting data and recording images of tropical cyclones over the global tropics for an astounding 17 years now, captured this first image of Rammasun, which is Siamese for 'thunder god', just after it had made its final landfall on the coast of mainland China near Vietnam. The image was taken at 01:59 UTC (8:59 am local) 19 July 2014 and shows the horizontal distribution of rain intensity within Rammasun. Rain rates in the center (lighter part) of the swath are from the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR) while those in the outer swath (darker portion) are from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). TRMM shows extremely heavy rain rates on the order of 100 mm/hr (~4 inches per hour, shown in light pink) along the border with Vietnam near the center of the storm. Strong rain bands (curved green areas embedded with areas of red, indicating moderate and heavy areas of rain respectively) continue to wrap around the storm as evidence of the storm's powerful cyclonic circulation.

Super Typhoon Rammasun Strikes the Southern Coast of China

The next image as taken at the same time and shows a 3D view of Rammasun looking west. Areas highlighted in red indicate deeper penetrating individual storm tops and show areas of intense convective cells embedded within the overall storm. The highest tops are located in the surrounding rain bands; the center with is surrounding eye wall is still evident by the ring of high tops in the center of the image.

Super Typhoon Rammasun Strikes the Southern Coast of China


The TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation data (TMPA) analysis uses TRMM to calibrate rainfall estimates from other satellites to expand the rainfall coverage of the TRMM satellite. TMPA rainfall estimates for the period 14 to 21 July 2014 show a swath of heavy rain associated with the passage from Rammasun (storm symbols mark the path of Rammasun) extending from just west of the Philippines across the South China Sea and into southern China. Rainfall totals on the order of 225mm (~9 inches, brown) or more cover much of Hainan Island and the southern Leizhou Peninsula with upwards of 325 mm (~13 inches, dark red) located over the south China coast adjacent to Vietnam where Rammasun made its final landfall.

So far, 17 fatalities have been reported in China as a result of the storm, which previously killed nearly 100 people in the Philippines after passing through the north central part of that nation.