On 14 January 2026, a strong surface pressure gradient was found over the upper Midwestern United States. This can be seen in the NOAA Weather Prediction Center surface map for 1500 UTC on this day. While the center of the low pressure system is off over southern Québec, the tight packing of the isobars over the Great Lakes region indicates that low-level winds are going to be intense throughout the region.

By suing scatterometers, satellites are particularly useful at identifying surface winds over large bodies of water, so long as they’re still liquid. While it is mid-January, the main bodies of Lakes Michigan and Superior are still wide open, so scatterometer winds can help diagnose the winds over those locations. The following plot shows the ASCAT from EUMETSAT’S MetOP-C satellite.

With winds over Lake Superior from the north,the flow has a significant amount of fetch across the lake. This allows for largely uninhibited wind speeds as little is in the way to slow the winds down, allowing them to reach speeds in excess of 40 kts in places. Of course, this is resulting in a classic lake effect event as seen on the GOES-19 True Color product. The classic parallel bands of clouds are clearly visible over much of eastern Superior.

However, if you look at the contemporaneous radar, the snow appears to me much less widespread than would be expected from the satellite coverage. The snow appears to be constrained to a relatively small-radius around the Marquette, Michigan, radar. However, this is because lake effect snows are quite shallow, often less than 1.5 km deep. Since radars have a minimum elevation angle, after a certain distance away from the radar, the beam is overshooting the altitudes where the snow is forming.

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A combination of 10-minute Full Disk scan and 5-minute PACUS Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) False Color RGB images from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (above) showed the signature of a volcanic cloud following the eruption of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawai`i — which became apparent after 1831 UTC on 12 January 2026, and soon thereafter began moving south-southeast. (This was Episode 40 of the ongoing Kilauea eruption; Episode 1 began on 23 December 2024.) Since this False Color RGB product uses the ABI 8.5 µm spectral band (which is sensitive to SO₂ absorption) in its green component, shades of cyan were indicative of a high concentration of SO₂ within the volcanic cloud.

A plot of rawinsonde data from Hilo (below) indicated that NW winds were present between the altitudes of 2.2-4.4 km (the summit of Kilauea is at an elevation of 1.25 km), which were responsible for the south-southeast transport the volcanic cloud. According to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, the volcanic plume rose to altitudes of 4 km over the eruption site, before moving southeast at higher altitudes.

GOES-18 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) provided a view of the volcanic cloud that initially developed at 1816 UTC and later moved south-southeast of the Big Island. In addition, an overshooting top was frequently seen directly over the eruption site. A larger-scale animation that extends to sunset is available here.

GOES-18 Shortwave Infrared images (below) displayed the thermal signature of lava fountaining and lava flows during Kilauea’s eruption (which was briefly masked by clouds at times).

As early as 1836 UTC on 12 January (14 minutes after eruption onset), the thermal signature exhibited a 3.9 µm brightness temperature of 137.88ºC (below) — which is the saturation temperature of GOES-18 ABI Band 7 detectors. This saturation temperature was intermittently seen until the eruption episode ended at 0404 UTC on 13 January.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Infrared and Visible images (above) included plots of GLM Flash Points — which showed an area of convection that produced thundersnow and 1/4 mile visibility at Grant, New Mexico (KGNT) and prompted the issuance of a Special Weather Statement which mention of a snow squall affecting areas that included a portion of I-40 east of Grant late in the day on 08 January 2026.

A larger-scale view of 1-minute GOES-18 Infrared images (below) extended past sunset — when convection with lightning produced more thundersnow at Double Eagle II (KAEG) just NW of Albuquerque International Airport (KABQ). A Special Weather Statement was issued at 0035 UTC (image | text) as this thunderstorm began to produce accumulating graupel — graupel (GR) was later reported at KABQ, beginning at 0104 UTC (METARs). A Severe Thunderstorm Warning was then issued for that storm as it produced 1.00-inch diameter hail at 0100 UTC.

In a toggle between the GOES-18 Infrared image at 0050 UTC that included GLM Flash Points with/without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density (below), note that the 2 GLM Flash Points are parallax-corrected (to match their location at the surface), while the GLM Flash Extent Density gridded product is *not* parallax-corrected (and therefore exhibited a slight NNE displacement in GOES-18 imagery).

The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of the thunderstorm in the vicinity of Albuquerque — around -50ºC — were just below the Most Unstable (MU) air parcel’s Equilibrium Level (EL), according to a plot of rawinsonde data from KABQ (below).

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VIIRS Infrared images from Suomi-NPP and NOAA-21 (above) showed widespread ice leads in the Chukchi Sea during the 3-day period from 06-08 January 2026. A combination of surface wind stress and ocean currents influenced the motion and evolution of these ice leads.

Surface analyses (below) showed a tighter pressure gradient across the Chukchi Sea early in the 3-day period, as high pressure was approaching from the Siberian Sea — which would have induced a stronger northerly flow across the VIIRS image domain displayed above. As the core of this high pressure settled over eastern Siberia on 08 January, the pressure gradient relaxed across much of the Chukchi Sea, with a lighter westerly flow likely becoming more prominent toward the end of the 3-day period.

Daily results using an AI-based sea ice lead detection method covering the entire Arctic Ocean are shown below; the Chukchi Sea is located near the bottom center of the images.

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