GPM Observes Snow Storm over Kentucky, West Virginia, and North Carolina (Feb. 17, 2015)
Animation depicting a snowstorm over Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. A slicing plane reveals the inside of the storm, showing where the precipitation switches from rain (yellow, green, and red) to snow and ice (light blue and purple).
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Satellite captured a 3-D image of a winter storm on Feb. 17 that left six to 12 inches of snow over much of Kentucky, southwestern West Virginia, and northwestern North Carolina. The shades of blue in the 3-D image indicate rates of snowfall with more intense snowfall shown in darker blue. Underneath where it melts into rain, the most intense rainfall is shown in red. You can see a lot of variation in precipitation types over the Southeastern portion of the United States.
The GPM Core Observatory carries two instruments that show the location and intensity of rain and snow, which defines a crucial part of the storm structure – and how it will behave. The GPM Microwave Imager sees through the tops of clouds to observe how much and where precipitation occurs, and the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar observes precise details of precipitation in 3-dimensions.
GPM data is part of the toolbox of satellite data used by forecasters and scientists to understand how storms behave. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Current and future data sets are available with free registration to users from NASA Goddard's Precipitation Processing Center website.
Color bar for frozen precipitation rates (eg, snow rates). Shades of cyan represent low amounts of frozen precipitation, whereas shades of purple represent high amounts of precipitation.
Color bar for liquid precipitation rates (ie, rain rates). Shades of green represent low amounts of liquid precipitation, whereas shades of red represent high amounts of precipitation.
Print resolution still showing the Feb 17th, 2015 snowstorm over Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina (depicted using GPM/GMI precipitation measurements and DPR data)
Print resolution still showing GPM/GMI precipitation measurements and DPR data for the storm
Print resolution still of a slicing plane revealing the storm’s inner volumetric rain and snow rates.
Print resolution still of a slicing plane revealing the storm’s inner volumetric rain and snow rates.
Print resolution still depicting a side view of the storm with a slicing plane revealing volumetric rain and snow rates.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Kel Elkins (USRA)
- Alex Kekesi (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
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Producers
- Ryan Fitzgibbons (USRA)
- Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC)
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Writer
- Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC)
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Scientists
- Gail Skofronick Jackson (NASA/GSFC)
- Dalia B Kirschbaum (NASA/GSFC)
- George Huffman (NASA/GSFC)
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Project support
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Release date
This page was originally published on Thursday, February 26, 2015.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:49 PM EDT.
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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[GOES: IR4]
ID: 33 -
Rain Rates (Surface Precipitation) [GPM: GMI]
ID: 822Credit: Data provided by the joint NASA/JAXA GPM mission.
See all pages that use this dataset -
Volumetric Precipitation data (Ku) [GPM: DPR]
ID: 830Credit: Data provided by the joint NASA/JAXA GPM mission.
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.