The Blue Origin New Glenn NG-2 mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida at 2055 UTC on 13 November 2025. A multi-panel display showing all 16 ABI spectral bands on the GOES-19 (GOES-East) satellite (above) revealed distinct thermal signatures in the 3 Water Vapor bands (08/09/10) at 2056 UTC, with a more subtle signature in the CO₂ band (16) and one faintly-brighter pixel in the Cirrus band (04). A signature of the rocket booster condensation cloud was evident in all 16 ABI spectral bands, closer to the coast. Unfortunately, there was no 1-minute GOES-19 Mesoscale Domain Sector coverage over that area — so only 5-minute CONUS Sector imagery was available.

A slightly longer sequence of GOES-19 True Color RGB images (below) highlighted the rapid dissipation of the rocket booster condensation cloud as it drifted eastward away from the launch site.

A plot of rawinsonde data from Cocoa Beach, Florida (KXMR) during the morning preceding the launch (below) showed dry air aloft throughout much of the troposphere — which contributed to the fairly rapid dissipation of the rocket booster’s condensation cloud.

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As mentioned in Wednesday’s blog post, a significant geomagnetic storm continued to make impacts last night, with many across the central and northern portions of North America able to relatively easily spot the aurora borealis for the second night in a row. As anyone who has watched the aurora from the ground knows, it is a dynamic phenomenon with notable shifts in pattern and intensity over the course of minutes-to-hours. One unique way that we can examine the evolution of the aurora over the course of a night is to view a time series of VIIRS Day Night Band imagery from the JPSS constellation. While VIIRS imagery is often composited to provide wider geographic coverage, that technique has the downside of losing the short-term temporal aspect of the features in the image. Below is an 8 image sequence of VIIRS DNB imagery over the eastern and central United States covering from 6:06 – 9:47 UTC on November 13th, 2025. This features data from S-NPP (just back from an instrument anomaly), NOAA-20, and NOAA-21. This data was captured by SSEC’s direct broadcast antenna in Madison and processed with low-latency locally using CSPP SDR and Polar2Grid.

The large, bright white streaks over southern Canada indicate where the aurora was overhead at the time the satellite passed over. During times when the aurora was more dim, it takes on a more uniform east-west origination around 50 degrees North latitude, but when it is more bright and intense, the pattern of the aurora becomes more agitated and full of swirls. These short-lived periods of more intense aurora activity may be attributable to a phenomenon called geomagnetic substorms. The ESA has a nice explainer on the mechanisms behind substorm auroras here.

Alaska is well-known for its frequent aurora viewing opportunities, and last night’s storm was no exception. Thanks to direct broadcast VIIRS data collected by the Geographic Information Network of Alaska and processed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, we can pick up from roughly the same time as the end of the loop above, providing coverage from 9:42 – 16:02 UTC. The intensity of the aurora over Alaska was generally fading through about 13:53 UTC, before becoming dramatically brighter during the 14:23 and 14:43 UTC overpasses over the northern half of the state.

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The Bald Mountain brush fire had been burning for several days in far western Virginia — but flared up on 12 November 2025, due to ongoing moderate drought conditions and an increase in winds west of a surface trough of low pressure. 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible images with an overlay of the Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm Fire Mask derived product (above) showed an initial fire detection at 1251 UTC in far northeast Craig County — and a smoke plume later became apparent as wind gusts at nearby METAR sites such as Roanoke (KROA) reached 30-37 kts during the afternoon hours.

However, 1-minute GOES-19 GeoColor RGB images (below) depicted the smoke plume with greater clarity during the daytime hours — and Next Generation Fire System (NGFS) Fire Detection polygons portrayed a thermal signature of the Bald Mountain Fire several hours earlier than the Fire Mask derived product.

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A series of recent coronal mass ejections from the sun cased a severe geomagnetic storm on earth. On the evening of 11 November 2025 into the early morning of the 12th, this resulted in a very strong aurora borealis event visible across much of the continental United States. Reports came as far south as southern Alabama (witness this social media post from the Mobile, AL, NWS office). Much of the central and southeastern United States was cloud-free last night, opening up a rare opportunity for vast swaths of Americans to view such a unique phenomenon. The night microphysics RGB identifies where the clear areas were; the large pink regions represent the areas with clear skies as of 0300 UTC on the 12th.

The Day-Night Band on VIIRS is capable of showing what the aurora look like from the satellite view. The following image is a composite of multiple VIIRS overpasses on NOAA-21 as captured by direct broadcast antennas. Note that the peak band of light penetrated into the continental United States. The moon phase was a waning gibbous at roughly 55% illumination, providing some additional light for the clouds.

The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center anticipates another severe geomagnetic storm from the evening of the 12th into the 13th. As such, there may be additional aurora viewing opportunities then.

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