Springtime showers and thunderstorms dumped heavy rains over parts of northwestern Arkansas and south central Missouri over the weekend. Hardest hit was northwestern Arkansas where two children were swept away by flood waters west of Huntsville, Arkansas. A stationary front draped across central Arkansas from northern Texas to the Mid-Atlantic region provided the focus for strong storms as southerly winds pumped low-level moisture up from the Gulf of Mexico.
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite uses both passive and active sensors to examine rainfall from space. The TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (MPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center monitors rainfall over the global tropics. MPA rainfall totals for the period 23-25 April 2004 show up to a foot of rain (dark red areas) may have fallen over the northern Ozarks near the Arkansas-Missouri border. The heaviest rains fell on the evening of Friday the 23rd and early morning of Saturday the 24th (local time).
TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.
Images produced by Hal Pierce (SSAI/NASA GSFC) and caption by Steve Lang (SSAI/NASA GSFC).
