Typhoon Melor & Tropical Storm Parma

Once a powerful Super Typhoon, Parma (left) crossed over the northern tip of Luzon Island, the Philippines, on Oct. 3, 2009, as a Category 1 typhoon. The storm battered the island with damaging winds and heavy rain before moving over the South China Sea, where it stalled, spinning more or less in place for about a day and a half. On Oct. 6, the storm reversed direction and moved southeast back over Luzon. The cause of this change in direction was the powerful Super Typhoon Melor (right) that moved close enough to Parma to influence its motion. This image blends two satellite overpasses to show the proximity of the two storms to one another. The left half of the image, containing Tropical Storm Parma, is from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, acquired at 10:35 a.m. Philippine time. The right half of the image was taken just under two hours later by the MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The time difference causes the subtle differences in lighting from one side of the image to the other.

South China Sea