Figure 3 illustrates the water vapor content of air observed by AMSR-E on board the Aqua satellite. Heavy rain can occur where the water vapor content of air is high. You can see much water vapor in the air (red and yellow) is distributed in a spiral around the hurricane (*). This hurricane has the typical structure of a tropical cyclone because of the intense rain outside the eye and the large volume of water vapor contained in the air.

(*) The gray area in the center of hurricane indicates that AMSR-E is unable to estimate water vapor content because of the heavy rainfall.