Supertyphoon Paka formed during early December south of the Hawaiian Islands and tracked westward for eleven days as a minimal tropical storm. On December 10, the first of three major, rapid intensification episodes commenced 500 km to the southeast of Kwajalein Atoll. Paka achieved supertyphoon status on December 14 and devastated Guam two days later. Color-enhanced infrared (IR) animations constructed from the Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS) imagery revealed that a large, long-lived convective burst had initiated near the inner core region at the start of the first rapid intensification. The Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite overflew Paka while this burst was in progress. The TRMM passive microwave radiometer (TMI) and precipitation radar (PR) data, when superimposed on the standard GMS product, provide an unprecedented view inside the high-level cold cloud features of this important, rapidly evolving burst. GMSIR images of Paka early on the 10th suggested that the storm was largely immature, and an eye was not visible until 00 UTC 11 December. But the PR showed that a closed eye was present and completely hidden beneath the cloud debris generated by the first burst. Thus both the PRand TMI imply that Paka was already near typhoon strength and in the process of rapidly deepening for some time. Furthermore, only 10-20% of the coldest IR area defining the burst envelope contained vigorous convection, and most of this activity was confined to its far western flank. At the time of the TRMM overpass (0532 UTC) only the narrow, weak remnants of a single 18-km deep"hot tower" could be found in cross sections through the eye. This suggests that much of the extensive IR-indicated cold cloud shield was generated by earlier, mature (and perhaps more widespread) convection. Since the coldest IR features continued to evolve over the next seven hours (i.e. brightness temperatures in the burst decreased and the areal extent of coldest cirrus expanded twenty fold), it is likely that these long-lived bursts - which appear as singlular, large convective cells in the GMS imagery - are actually composed of a succession of smaller, short-lived and more numerous "hot towers"