Cyclone Haruna strengthened into a cyclone and quickly developed an eye that became apparent on visible and infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite. NASA's TRMM satellite analyzed Haruna's heavy rainfall, and NASA and NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a night-time image that verified the strongest areas of the storm.

After days of torrential rain pushed the lower Limpopo River over its banks in late January 2013, flood water surrounded the city of Xai-Xai in southern Mozambique. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image on January 31.

On Monday, Oct. 29, Hurricane Sandy was ravaging the Mid-Atlantic with heavy rains and tropical storm force winds as it closed in for landfall. Earlier, NASA's CloudSat satellite passed over Hurricane Sandy and its radar dissected the storm get a profile or sideways look at the storm. NASA's Aqua satellite provided an infrared view of the cloud tops and NOAA's GOES-13 satellite showed the extent of the storm. The National Hurricane Center reported at 11 a.m. EDT on Oct.

New Orleans residents braced for the arrival of Isaac, due to come ashore around 7:00 p.m. local time on August 28, 2012. As of 10:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time on August 28, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that a hurricane warning was in effect from Morgan City, Louisiana, eastward to the Mississippi-Alabama border, including the New Orleans metropolitan area. At the time of that bulletin, however, Isaac remained a tropical storm, with maximum sustained winds of 70 miles (110 kilometers) per hour.

Floods and landslides caused dozens of casualties in northeastern India in late June and early July 2012. By July 1, the death toll stood at 77, The Hindu reported. As of that date, the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries had breached more than 40 levees. Reuters India reported that thousands of homes, mostly made of bamboo and straw, had washed away in days of torrential rains. The floods also breached roads and bridges, and downed power lines.

By May 30, 2012, a wildfire burning in Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico had burned more of the landscape than any other fire in the state’s history.

According to figures released by the U.S. Forest Service, the Whitewater-Baldy fire had burned 170,272 acres (266 square miles), surpassing a fire that burned 156,293 acres (244 square miles) near Los Alamos in 2011. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this view of the fire around 4:00 p.m. local time (20:00 Universal Time) on May 29, 2012.

Days of torrential rain caused widespread flooding in southern China in May 2012. Heavy rain fell from May 8 to 16, 2012, the Flood Observatory reported. The International Business Times reported that more than 5 million people in more than 10 provinces had been affected by the downpours. As of May 14, authorities had evacuated nearly 200,000 residents.

Hurricane Season 2012: Typhoon Pakhar (Western North Pacific Ocean)

The first typhoon of the northern hemisphere 2012 typhoon season is headed for landfall in Vietnam. NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites have been providing forecasters with valuable data on Typhoon Pakhar, that includes rainfall rates, cloud extent and temperature.

View larger image This color-coded map shows the rain associated with Giovanna from February 8 to 14, 2012. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using near-real-time data provided courtesy of TRMM Science Data and Information System at Goddard Space Flight Center.