Orbital View As Typhoon Goni Heads For Japan

NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Goni after it moved out of the East China Sea and north into the Sea of Japan.
At 04:30 UTC (12:30 a.m. EDT) on August 25, 2015, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured a visible picture of the typhoon. The image showed the storm’s center in the southern part of the Sea of Japan, and the storm filled up the bottom half of the sea. The typhoon appeared weaker as there was no visible eye. The MODIS image also showed that the storm’s western quadrant were over North Korea and South Korea, while the eastern quadrant stretched over most of the big island of Japan.

At 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT) on August 25, Goni’s maximum sustained winds were near 70 knots (80.5 mph/129.6 kph). It was centered near 35.3 North latitude and 131.0 East longitude, about 81 nautical miles (93 miles/150 km) northwest of Iwakuni, Japan. Goni was moving to the north-northeast at 13 knots (14.9 mph/24.0 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that Goni will continue to weaken and become extra-tropical as it moves north. The JTWC forecast discussion said that environmental conditions are rapidly deteriorating as the system becomes embedded in the flow of mid-latitude westerly winds and runs into high (40 to 50 knot) vertical wind shear. In addition, sea surface temperatures are near 26 Celsius (78.8 Fahrenheit), not warm enough to maintain a tropical cyclone.

The storm is expected to make final landfall near Vladivostok, Russia on August 26.