STAR Satellite Rainfall Estimates

Hydro-Estimator - Central America
Automatic Satellite-Derived Precipitation Estimates

This home page provides real time rainfall rate estimates over Central America based on cloud top temperature measurements from the GOES-12 satellite 10.7 micron channel. The estimates are adjusted by Precipitable Water (PW) and mean Relative Humidity (RH) computed by the NAM model. The 1- hour rainfall rate averages and the accumulated 3-hour estimates are available every hour starting at 00:00Z with updates every 15 minutes after the hour. The accumulated 6 hours estimates are updated at 00:15Z, 06:15Z, 12:15Z and 18:15Z and the 24 hours accumulation every 12:15Z. All IR image starting 00:00Z are also available. The estimates are not available when the GOES-12 is in rapid scan mode. This product has been calibrated and validated only for the continental United States (US). The estimates may be too high for cold cloud tops and too low for warm cloud tops. For more details see this technique description.

The model has been updated (January 2000) to include a moisture correction based on the NCEP AVN model, and to reduce the overestimates which occur in wide-spread convective regimes.