GREENBELT, Md., June 7 (UPI) -- NASA said Tuesday a satellite confirmed a "hot tower" of rainfall and thunderstorms in an eastern Pacific low pressure system is a tropical depression.
A hot tower is a rain cloud reaching at least to the top of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, about 9 miles high in the tropics.
These towers are called "hot" because of the large amount of latent heat that allows them to rise to such altitude.
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite confirmed the activity in the first tropical depression of the eastern Pacific hurricane season, NASA said in a release.
Tropical Depression 1E formed when the low pressure area called System 91E strengthened overnight, NASA said, and is now located about 365 miles south of Acapulco, Mexico.
It had maximum sustained winds near 30 mph and was moving to the northwest at about 3 mph, the agency said.
Hot towers indicate a lot of energy within a tropical depression and in the case of Tropical Depression 1E some of them reached heights of almost 10 miles, NASA reported.
