Satnews Daily
September 13th, 2010

Here's Looking @ Earth... Lowdown On 92L In The Caribbean (NASA—Imagery)


[SatNews] The GOES-13 satellite keeps an eye on the eastern U.S. and the Caribbean Sea and has been monitoring System 92L for days. On September 13, GOES-13 caught the bow-shaped system bringing rainfall to island nations in the eastern Caribbean. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13 captured a visible image of the bow-shaped System 92L in the Caribbean as it was bringing heavy rains over Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba on September 13 at 1745 UTC (1:45 p.m. EDT). GOES satellites are operated by NOAA, and the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. uses those satellite data to create images and animations.


Credit: NASA/GOES Project — Text credit: Rob Gutro, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and Hal Pierce, SSAI

The showers and thunderstorms in System 92L are still poorly organized in this broad area of low pressure over the west-central Caribbean Sea. At 1:53 p.m. EDT on September 13, Montego Bay/Sangster Airport in Jamaica was reporting light rain and 8 mph winds from the east. At the Holguin Airport, Cuba, light rain and thunderstorms were reported with winds blowing from the east-southeast at 12 mph. The National Hurricane Center does note that there's a 40 percent chance that System 92L could develop into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours as it moves west-northwestward around 20 mph. Whether it becomes tropical depression 13 in the Atlantic Ocean basin or not, locally heavy rainfall is possible over portions of Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, The Cayman Islands, and the Yucatan Peninsula during the next day or two. These heavy rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides, especially in areas of mountainous terrain.