Tropical Storm Nargis kills more than 22,000
The death toll from Burma’s devastating cyclone has now risen to more than 22,000 (BBC). Another 41,000 are missing three days after Cyclone Nargis hit the country, causing a huge tidal surge to sweep inland, according to state radio. The United Nations estimates up to a million could be homeless. Before coming ashore Nargis intensified into a powerful category four tropical cyclone with wind speeds estimated at 115 knots (132 mph).
Image Credit: Hal Pierce, SSAI/NASA GSFC. Click to enlarge
Nargis, the first tropical cyclone of the North Indian Ocean season, is shown in the image above when the storm was overflown by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite on May 3, 2008 at 0043 UTC (May 2 at 8:43 p.m. EDT). By this time Nargis had weakened to minimal hurricane force with wind speeds of about 70 knots (80 miles per hour).
Click to enlarge. Image Credit: NASA.
In this image, a half ring of tall towers (highlighted in red) reveals areas of deep convection (e.g., thunderstorms) that are associated with the intense rainfall in the western eyewall that was seen in the previous image. These tall towers can be a sign of future intensification as they release substantial amounts of heat into the core of the storm. At present, Nargis has begun to recurve towards the east-northeast and has weakened slightly.
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Dr. Abduwasit Ghulam is a geospatial and environmental scientist from the Center for Environmental Sciences at Saint Louis University. He has been actively involved in research and education in remote sensing and GIS, climate change, human interactions on the changing environment and natural disasters such as droughts and floods. 
This may turn out to be one of the deadliest storms of the century- the US Charge D’Affairs in Yangon, Shari Villarosa, now estimates that the death toll will exceed 100,000. Aid is desperately needed, and 2,000 square miles of the delta region are still under water.