GOES-18 airmass RGB imagery, above (created using geo2grid software), shows the development of a hurricane-force low to the west of Washington and Oregon on the 19th of November. The orange and purple colors in the RGB suggest a significant intrusion of stratospheric air. That air is rich in ozone, and there are satellite observations that can highlight the ozone signal. NUCAPS profiles include information on trace gases, and the image below (from the JSTAR Mapper) shows the ozone distribution on 19 November.

Suomi-NPP also includes the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) instrument — available here at NASA Worldview. The animation of OMPS Column Ozone, below (from this source), shows the motion of ozone-rich air from over Alaska on the 17th to the Gulf of Alaska/northeast Pacific Ocean on the 19th.

The evolution of the system is also apparent in the water vapor infrared imagery (GOES-18, Band 8, 6.19 µm) below. Cyclogenesis is rapid on the 19th as an impulse drops southward from Alaska.

GCOM-W1 overflew the strong system at 2112 UTC on 19 November, and the AMSR-2 winds (derived with GAASP software and available here) are shown below. Winds in excess of 64 knots (that is, hurricane-force) are shown west of Washington and Oregon.

SMAP winds (source, also available here), below, at 0101 UTC on 20 November, also show the strong winds with this potent system.

Metop-B and Metop-C both carry the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT), and winds from those two satellites above this system are shown below. As with the other microwave-derived windspeeds shown above, the strong winds separate from the center and also with wind features to the south and to the northeast of the center are prominent.

MetopC ASCAT winds are also in AWIPS, and the toggle below shows the fields overlain on top of Band 13 clean window infrared imagery. Two of the plots show all the ASCAT wind barbs; this allows a user to see at a glance the wind distributions. For more information on ASCAT winds, click here.

VIIRS Day Night Band visible (0.7 µm) imagery, below, at 0934 and 0958 UTC show the system illuminated with a waning gibbous 3/4 crescent moon. Winds observed at the buoys at this time were in the 30-40 knot range.

What were near-shore buoys showing? The toggle below (using plots from this website) shows observations at Buoy 46132 (South Brooks), 46206 (La Perouse Bank), 46087 (at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca), 46041 (Cape Elizabeth), 46029 (Columbia River Bar) (This figure shows the locations of most of the buoys, you can also see the locations here). The buoys showed wind gusts in excess of 50 knots, and sustained winds close to 35 knots.

Buoy 46005, at 46^oN, 131^oW, showed a pressure near 28″ of mercury (near 945 mb) and gusts exceeding 60 knots before failing.

GOES-18 Water Vapor images (above) revealed the distinct circulation associated with this rapidly intensifying low — whose center passed near Buoy 46005 (which recorded a wind gust of 64 knots at 2120 UTC, after which it stopped reporting).

NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 VIIRS Day/Night Band images that included a plot of the final 2100 UTC Buoy 46005 data (below) showed the center of the low passing just west of the buoy at that times.

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A display of all 16 ABI spectral bands from GOES-16 (GOES-East) showed that a hot thermal signature of the SpaceX Starship Falcon Heavy rocket booster was apparent in Near-Infrared & Infrared bands 04-16 at 2101 UTC during its Test Flight 6 on 19 November 2024. In addition, the rocket exhaust condensation cloud was seen in all 16 spectral bands, as it began to drift northeast away from the Starbase launch site along the south coast of Texas..

True Color RGB images (source) of the rocket exhaust condensation cloud as viewed from both GOES-18 (GOES-West) and GOES-16 are shown below (the images are displayed in the native projection of each satellite). Since the launch was late in the afternoon, the higher-altitude portions of the condensation cloud cast long shadows onto the water surface off the Texas coast.

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Mostly clear skies over the Great Lakes early on 18 November allowed for good satellite estimates of Lake Surface temperatures. They are, in a word, very warm. The toggle above compares estimates from NOAA-20 and from GOES-16. The stepped animation below (source) compares November 17th values this year with those from 2021, 2022 and 2023, and a tabular comparison for the past 4 years follows.

Year	Superior	Michigan	Huron	Erie	Ontario
2021	8.24	10.09	10.18	11.43	10.30
2022	5.49	7.95	8.89	9.44	10.15
2023	6.52	9.63	8.60	11.07	9.71
2024	8.28	11.86	10.83	13.95	11.07

Mean temperature plots of the five Great Lakes, shown below in comparison to the mean value (based on 1998-2023), also show the anomalous warmth (source).

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The ACSPO imagery above gives similar results from both satellites, although the higher resolution of VIIRS allows for better identification of small-scale features, and allows for values closer to the shoreline; values between the two satellites agree to within a degree of so Fahrenheit, with GOES estimates showing warmer temperatures generally. The zoomed-in toggles below compare GOES-16/NOAA-20 over Lake Superior to the east of the Keewenaw Peninsula, and over southern Lake Michigan. The pixel size difference is obvious in the zoomed-in imagery.

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The unseasonably warm waters of the Great Lakes mean that when temperatures do cool enough to support Lake Effect Snow, that Lake Effect snow might, at least initially, be a lot more intense than in a year with more normal Lake Surface Temperatures. NOAA-20 ACSPO SSTs were created using CSPP software and the Direct Broadcast data downloaded via the antenna located at CIMSS. You can also view the ACSPO SSTs at this (transitory) website.

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Target Sector (2.5-minute interval) JMA Himawari-9 AHI Red Visible (0.64 µm) and Clean Infrared Window (10.4 µm) images (above) showed Super Typhoon Man-Yi as it made landfall along the Philippines island of Luzon on 17 November 2024. Low-altitude mesovortices were apparent within the eye as it was offshore — then a notable convective burst developed as the eye became cloud-filled shortly after moving inland.

A toggle between VIIRS Day/Night Band images from NOAA-21 and Suomi-NPP (below) provided two high-resolution views of Man-Yi as it approached Luzon.

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