Typhoon Nepartak developed on 3 July 2016 south of Guam before rapidly intensifying and moving to the west-northwest of the pacific nation. Warm water, low vertical wind shear and an upper-level trough provided favourable environmental conditions for the typhoon to intensify over the following days.
On 7 July Nepartak’s maximum winds increased to 150 knots (277.8 kilometres per hour), making it a Category 5 hurricane. The storm was moving to the west-northwest of Taipei, Taiwan at 18 knots (33.3 kilometres per hour), generating wave heights to 14.6 metres.
Nepartak is forecast to make landfall along the eastern coast of Taiwan on Thursday 7 July or early Friday (Taiwan time).
NASA’s RapidScat instrument has measured winds around super-typhoon Nepartak while NASA-JAXA’s Global Precipitation Measurement core satellite has analysed rainfall rates within the typhoon.
This video shows the tall thunderstorm towers identified by GPM near the centre of the intensifying storm. These tall thunderstorms called “hot towers” were found to reach heights of 17 kilometres, dropping rain at a rate of more than 193 millimetres per hour.