Himawari-9 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) showed the east-northeast transport of the wildfire smoke plume, with its embedded pyroCb cloud.
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10-minute JMA Himawari-9 AHI “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.4 µm) images (above) showed the formation of 2 pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds spawned by a wildfire in Sichuan Province, China on 16 March 2024. The initial (smaller, shorter-lived) pyroCb developed at 0820 UTC —... Read More
Himawari-9 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) showed the east-northeast transport of the wildfire smoke plume, with its embedded pyroCb cloud.
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It’s spring time on the Great Plains, which means strong dynamical systems that often bring blizzards as well as severe thunderstorms. A long-wave trough with an embedded 850-500mb jet streak created cyclogenesis in western Oklahoma and southwest Kansas on March 13, with associated low-level moisture return into eastern Kansas.The strong... Read More
It’s spring time on the Great Plains, which means strong dynamical systems that often bring blizzards as well as severe thunderstorms. A long-wave trough with an embedded 850-500mb jet streak created cyclogenesis in western Oklahoma and southwest Kansas on March 13, with associated low-level moisture return into eastern Kansas.
The strong instability and excellent wind shear spawned rapidly growing thunderstorms (some of which are highlighted in this blog post). ProbSevere LightningCast, which is a deep-learning model that uses GOES ABI to predict next-hour lightning, showed high probabilities on this convection 20-30 minutes before the first flashes.
While LightningCast is scheduled to become operational in NOAA in later 2024, new enhancements will be evaluated in NOAA’s Hazardous Weather Testbed in 2024, including the probability of >=10 flashes in the next 60 min, and a GOES-West-only model (trained on GOES-18 data). One important aspect that will be evaluated are lightning dashboards. These time series of the probability of lightning and observed GLM flashes can serve meteorologists providing impacts-based decision support for large venues like stadiums, concerts, fairs, and amusement parks. The dashboard below shows the progression of LightningCast probabilities and GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) flashes near Kansas City International Airport as storms approached.
As storms became severe, the Kansas City metro region got hammered with hailstones up to 3″ in diameter, while tornadoes touched down between Manhattan and Topeka.
The ProbSevere v3 models track developing thunderstorms and use use radar, satellite, lightning data, and near-term near-storm environment data from the HRRR model to predict next-hour severe weather probabilities of hail, wind, and tornado. This guidance improves confidence for forecasters in their warning-decision making and helps provide enhanced situational awareness of how storms are evolving. Scientists are exploring methods to exploit polarimetric radar data and the important spatial aspects of radar and satellite data, to further improve the models’ accuracy.
This method of data fusion and probabilistic guidance is especially useful in busy situations with numerous rapidly evolving storms with multiple threats (see below, in eastern Kansas). The quick-look probabilities, cursor read-out, and time series functionality help forecasters make more efficient and effective warning decisions.
Another machine-learning model developed at CIMSS is the IntenseStormNet, which uses GOES-R ABI and GLM images to detect “intense” convection, as viewed from a geostationary satellite perspective. This model excels at isolating the most intense parts of storms in developing and mature convection using a computer-vision approach, which holistically uses features like strong overshooting tops, above-anvil cirrus plumes, cold-U signatures, and strong anvil-edge gradients to predict probabilities.
IntenseStormNet is particularly valuable when radar coverage is diminished, but still adds value to ProbSevere v3 models even in the presence of good radar coverage. The final movie shows a zoomed-out view of IntenseStormNet applied to all of the convection in the central U.S. on March 14.
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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) images from all 16 of the ABI spectral bands plus a Rocket Plume RGB (above) displayed signatures of the SpaceX Starship 3 rocket that was launched from the Starbase facility in Boca Chica Beach, Texas at 1325 UTC on 14 March 2024. During the first 4 minutes post-launch, the Stage... Read More
In Band 8 (Upper-level Water Vapor) imagery, note the change in exhaust plume shape with time and atmospheric layer: at early altitudes of 20-50 km (where the Stratosphere had more density, and therefore higher ambient pressure), the Stage 1 booster plume was more linear — but after “hot stage separation” as the Stage 2 rocket reached higher altitudes of 70-80 km (where the Mesosphere was much less dense, with lower ambient pressure) the plume was able to expand outward into more of a curved “boomerang” shape at 1329 UTC.
A close-up view using 16-panel displays of all GOES-16 ABI spectral bands (below) showed that a warm thermal signature of the Stage 1 rocket booster was apparent at 1328 UTC in Infrared bands 04-16 (just to the right of center in each image panel).
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Severe weather occurred over Kansas late in the day 13 March. SPC Storm Reports, shown below, indicate three tornadoes (as of 13 March) within a swath of wind and hail reports. The animation above shows the development of the strong thunderstorms along a warm front in northern Kansas. The tornado observations are... Read More
Severe weather occurred over Kansas late in the day 13 March. SPC Storm Reports, shown below, indicate three tornadoes (as of 13 March) within a swath of wind and hail reports. The animation above shows the development of the strong thunderstorms along a warm front in northern Kansas. The tornado observations are plotted between 0046 and 0146 UTC on 14 March. They occurred within the Topeka KS CWA (WFO TOP) that is outlined in the animation above.
Overlapping 1-minute GOES-16 Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided imagery at 30-second intervals over northcentral/northeast Kansas — Infrared imagery covering the period when the tornado-producing thunderstorms occurred within the WFO Topeka County Warning Area are shown above. The default max/min Infrared enhancement Color Table ranges were changed to 55/-90 C, to better highlight the pulses of overshooting tops. Beginning around 0040 UTC, a distinct “enhanced-V” storm top signature was exhibited by the thunderstorm that produced the first tornado, south-southeast of Ft. Riley Kansas (KFRI) at 0050 UTC.
A larger-scale view using 1-minute GOES-16 Infrared images is shown below. Note the report of 4.00-inch diameter hail at 0110 UTC, just southeast of Manhattan, Kansas (KMHK).
What satellite products might have been used before this outbreak to better understand or anticipate it? The toggle below shows lapse rates (700-500mb and 850-700 mb) derived from gridded NOAA-20 NUCAPS profiles (source). Steep lapse rates exist over Kansas from 700-500 mb; convection that develops there will not be impeded by stability.
Polar Hyperspectral Soundings can be fused with ABI data to blend the high spectral resolution Polar Data with the high spatial and temporal resolution of geostationary data. That thermodynamic information can then be assimilated into a high-resolution mesoscale model to give short-term forecasts that include better moisture information. Model output is here (this model is one of the products to be demonstrated at the Hazardous Weather Testbed at the Storm Prediction Center in late May and early June). What did model output suggest. The animations below shows Significant Tornado Parameter at 0100 and 0200 UTC on 14 March (from two consecutive model runs initialized at 2000 UTC and 2200 UTC on 13 March 2024, respectively). Both model runs suggest greater tornado probabilities within the TOP CWA, as was observed.
Animations of MUCAPE, below, valid at 0000, 0100 and 0200 UTC on 14 March, show the northward motion to the most unstable air through the Topeka CWA
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