For past few days the tropics have just been exploding with activity. In the Atlantic is Hurricane Rafael, in the NEPac was Major Hurricane Paul, in the NWpac is Typhoon Prapiroon and Tropical Storm Maria, along with Invest 91W, and in the South Indian was Cyclone Anais. Below is an image from multiple geostationary satellites from 10/15/12 at 18Z with each of these storms labeled.
All this activity is enough to start affecting the mid-latitudes. Below is an animated loop of total precipitable water (TPW) stitched together from multiple microwave satellite swaths over 72 hours (ending at 10/17/12 00Z), produced by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This essentially show how much precipitation would occur if all the water that could precipitate in that air actually did. Its great for tracking air masses across large distances and it helps one find the source of pockets of moisture. In the loop below, moisture from the outflows of both Prapiroon and Maria get swept up in strong westerlies. This moisture made its way all the way to the Pacific NW of the US where it dumped (and continues to dump) large amounts of rain, abruptly ending a nearly record-breaking dry streak.
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