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RapidScat and Hurricane Patricia

Nov. 6, 2015
NASA's ISS-RapidScat's antenna, lower right, was pointed at Hurricane Patricia as the powerful storm approached Mexico on Oct. 23, 2015.

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NASA's RapidScat's antenna, lower right, was pointed at Hurricane Patricia as the powerful storm approached Mexico on Oct. 23, 2015. Patricia was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, with maximum winds of 200 mph (320 kilometers per hour). When it first made landfall on the Pacific coast of Mexico on Oct. 23, it was a destructive Category 5 storm.

The videos are from the International Space Station. RapidScat's spinning antenna, lower right, collects wind-speed data from Hurricane Patricia.

RapidScat measures Earth's ocean surface wind speed and direction over open waters. The instrument's data on ocean winds provide essential measurements for researchers and scientists to use in weather predictions, including hurricane monitoring. The NASA instrument arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 23, 2014, providing a new resource for tracking and studying storms ranging from tropical cyclones to nor'easters. RapidScat has kept busy in 2015's already active Southern Hemisphere hurricane season and the Northern Hemisphere's winter storm season.

For more information on RapidScat, visit http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/RapidScat/ and http://www.nasa.gov/rapidscat.

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