In a sequence of daytime True Color RGB + Nighttime Microphysics RGB images from GOES-16 (GOES-East) and GOES-18 (GOES-West) (above), signatures of the SpaceX Starship Test Flight 8 launch were seen — the Super Heavy Stage 1 rocket booster condensation cloud cast a long shadow across the water before sunset, as it became sheared by high-altitude winds over the Starbase launch site near the South Texas coast.

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 daytime True Color RGB + Nighttime Microphysics RGB images (source) are shown below.

A 16-panel display of 1-minute GOES-16 images (above) showed reflectance or thermal signatures from all 16 ABI spectral bands. It is notable that a thermal signature of the Super Heavy Stage 1 rocket booster was apparent in Near-Infrared and Infrared spectral bands 04-16 at 2333 UTC — and at 2334 UTC in bands 08/09/10/16, thermal signatures of (1) the Starship Stage 2 rocket (just after separation from the Stage 1 booster) and (2) the boostback burn of the Stage 1 booster rocket as it began its return to the Starbase launch site.

A toggle between GOES-16 Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images at 2336 UTC (below) showed thermal signatures of the Starship Stage 2 rocket as it was traveling east across the Gulf of Mexico. At that time the rocket had reached altitudes of 70-80 km (where air within the Mesosphere was much less dense, with low ambient pressure) — so the rocket exhaust plume was able to expand outward into more of a curved “boomerang” shape in the Water Vapor image.

View only this post Read Less

CSPP Geosphere imagery on 5 March, above, (direct link to imagery), shows the development of a smoke plume from a fire at the north end of San Jose Island. When did the Next Generation Fire System first identify the fire that caused the smoke plume? The NGFS Alerts Dashboard, below, shows a detection over Aransas County.

What did those CONUS (every five minute) detections show?The animation below shows NGFS Microphysics, Fire Temperature RGB and Band 7 (Shortwave infrared, 3.9 µm) imagery from GOES-16. The NGFS detection occurred at 1646 UTC. The fire develops quickly and the Fire Temperature RGB and Band 7 imagery show a very obvious fire signal by 1701 UTC.

---

NGFS detections also occur with VIIRS imagery that has much greater spatial resolution, as fine as 375m for some infrared (and visible) channels. The NOAA-21 overpass shows a smoke plume in the GeoColor imagery below, and three separate fire detections in these Real Earth screenshots (from here).

A zoomed-in view of the NGFS detections and the NGFS Microphysics is shown below. Of particular note is that VIIRS data resolves three separate fires.

What did GOES show at the same time? That’s shown below in a toggle between GeoColor and the NGFS Microphysics RGB. The advantages of the higher-resolution VIIRS imagery shown above is obvious. VIIRS coverage is somewhat limited over CONUS; it is much more plentiful over Alaska where GOES pixel sizes have become large because of the distance to Alaska from the sub-satellite point of GOES-18.

This detection on 5 March was over a relatively uninhabited region, where satellite detection will likely give the earliest alert for responders. On 4 March, when much of south Texas was within a critical fire weather outlook from SPC, a fire developed within the pixels that included at the NWS Corpus Christi office! The NGFS detections for that (brief) grassland fire are shown below.

This example on 4 March demonstrates why it’s important for a weather office to have windows!

View only this post Read Less

GOES-19 today is positioned at 89.5^oW, the test position, but is presently scheduled to drift east to the GOES-East location at 75.2^oW. When on station in early April, it will become the operational GOES-East satellite. CIMSS scientists have been modifying CSPPGeo software to produce products, such as LightningCast probability (available online here, or, for GOES-16/GOES-18 in AWIPS), using GOES-19 data as input. The image above shows LightningCast probabilities from GOES-19 over a True Color image (a new feature of the latest beta). A comparison with GOES-16 (using Day Cloud Phase Distinction) is below. Differences in the fields are most likely due to view angle differences. You can read more on GOES-19 LightningCast probabilities here, and this blog post describes the (first) beta version of the software.

---

The new beta is available for download: https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/csppgeo/lightningcast_v1.0b2.html Comments and evaluations are welcome!

View only this post Read Less

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) showed the strong winds — associated with the passage of a cold front — which produced widespread areas of blowing dust across parts of southern/eastern New Mexico and western/northern Texas on 03 March 2025. This blowing dust caused marked reductions in visibility — leading to closures of Interstates 10 and 25 near Deming KDMN and Las Cruces KLRU in southern New Mexico, in addition to multiple-vehicle accidents near Roswell KROW.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) provided a more distinct view of the dense blowing dust, which eventually stretched from northern Mexico to far southeast Colorado and far southwest Kansas. Note the plume of blowing sand whose source region was White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico.

After sunset, GOES-16 Nighttime Microphysics RGB images (below) showed that the leading edge of the airborne dust (highlighted by brighter shades of magenta) advanced as far northward as Nebraska and South Dakota. The Nighttime Microphysics RGB makes use of the 10.3-12.3 µm “Split Window Difference“, which is effective for dust detection.

View only this post Read Less