Tropical Depression 16W in the Pacific Northwest grew into Tropical Storm Chaba over the past weekend, infrared imagery from NASA revealed powerful thunderstorms around Chaba's center.
Tropical Storm Chaba is now located about 525 nautical miles south-southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.
On October 25 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT) Chaba had maximum sustained winds near 60 knots (xx mph). It was still in open waters of the western North Pacific Ocean, near 18.3 North and 129.7 East. It was moving northwestward near 9 mph, and generating 19 foot-high seas.
NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Chaba on Sunday, Oct. 24 at 17:11 UTC (1:11 p.m. EDT) and captured an infrared image of the storm's cold cloud tops with th e Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument. At that time, Chaba's coldest cloud tops were as cold as or colder than -63 Fahrenheit indicating strong convection around the south and western edges of the center. The colder the thunderstrorm cloud tops, the higher the storms, and the stronger the thunderstorms.