NASA sees Tropical Storm Son-tinh moving into South China Sea

Tropical Storm Son-tinh soaked the Philippines and is now moving into the South China Sea. NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of the storm as the bulk western half of the storm had already moved over water.

On Oct. 25, 2012 at 0525 UTC (1:25 a.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Sin-Tingh. The image showed that the western half of the storm had already moved into the South China Sea, while powerful thunderstorms in the eastern half were still dropping heavy rainfall over Luzon. Satellite data shows that the strongest bands of thunderstorms are located in the northern quadrant of the storm, with another band to the northeast of the low-level center.

As a result of the eastern half of the storm still being over land, several areas in Luzon are still under Public storm warning signal #1. Those areas under warning include the Luzon provinces of Metro Manila, Bataan, Zambales, Cavite, Batangas, Northern part of Mindoro and Lubang Island.

By 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT), Tropical Storm Son-tinh had maximum sustained winds near 45 knots (51.7 mph/83.3 kph). It was located about 100 nautical miles (115 miles/185 km) southwest of Manila, the Philippines, near 14.0 North and 118.9 East. It is moving to the west-northwest near 16 knots (18.4 mph/29.6 kph).

Son-tinh is expected to cross the South China Sea in a northwesterly direction and move south of Hainan Island, China before making landfall in northern Vietnam on Oct. 27. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects Son-tinh to strengthen as it crosses the South China Sea.