Just north of Libya on the afternoon of 17 March 2026, a large cyclone can be seen forcing a significant amount of dust from the Sahara to the Mediterranean. This true-color view from EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) depicts this situation beautifully. Since MTG-FCI has three visible channels, it is able to produce true color products with fewer assumptions than the GOES-R series of satellites has to rely upon in order to produce similar-looking imagery. This image is from 1230 UTC and is provided courtesy of EUMETSAT’s Eumetview.

Of particular interest is the large dust band that has been pulled from Libya and Egypt into the air over the sea. The Dust RGB can be used to denote where dust is prevalent. The following image is for the same time. Areas in magenta are associated with dust, and it’s obvious how widespread the dust is.

An interesting question is: what kind of storm is this, exactly? A medicane (a portmanteau of “Mediterranean” and “Hurricane”) is a certain type of cyclone that exhibits some characteristics of a tropical storm, including a warm core and an eye, that separates it from a more traditional mid-latitude cyclone. These are able to use the relatively warm waters of the Mediterranean to develop like a traditional tropical system would, but generally at a much lower intensity. It is March, of course, so the sea surface temperatures are still cool. The 15-16 C temperatures are on the low end of what has been observed with medicanes, but is still possible as much of the dynamical driving is done by upper-level cold air. The ASCAT Winds show a maximum wind speed approaching 40 knots, though it is not clear if the center of the storm is truly calm or if there’s just an observational gap there.

Looking at the animation, there is definitely an eye-like structure at the center of the storm, which is not seen in a standard midlatitude cyclone due to the low-level convergence of those systems.

The 700 hPa temperature field from the ECMWF model from 1200 UTC on the 17th also seems to indicate a hint of a warm core to the system, as can be seen in the bottom center of the graphic below.

Together, these factors have caused some European meteorological centers to officially label this a Medicane. Depending on which agency you listen to, it’s either called Samuel (France, Andorra) or Jolina (Italy).

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GOES-19 Visible images with an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density showed the signature of a bolide over far southern Lake Erie at 1301 UTC on 17 March 2026. This bolide caused a sonic boom that was heard in several communities.

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5-minute GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible, Near-Infrared “Cirrus”, Mid-level Water Vapor and Clean Infrared Window images (above) displayed a set of curved contrails that formed south-southeast of Dallas/Fort Worth — created by 2 passenger aircraft in holding patterns, before eventually landing at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (KIAH) — which then drifted southeast toward the Texas coast on the morning of 16 March 2026.

The curved contrails were also seen in GOES-19 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below).

Flight track maps from FlightAware showed the holding pattern ovals taken by 2 United Airlines flights (at altitudes of 32000-33000 ft) northwest of KIAH (below).

A plot of rawinsonde data from Fort Worth at 1200 UTC (below) showed a moist layer from 294-217 hPa (30000-36000 ft), where these contrails likely developed and persisted.

Other examples of circular contrails have been previously documented on this blog.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) GeoColor RGB images with an overlay of Next Generation Fire System (NGFS) Fire Detection polygons (above) displayed the thermal signatures and daytime smoke plume associated with the Morrill Fire (Watch Duty | InciWeb) in the Nebraska Panhandle on 12 March 2026 (the initial NGFS detection was at 1939 UTC). Surface observations in the vicinity of the fire depicted wind gusts exceeding 60 mph at times (for example, at sites north and southwest of the fire at 2141 UTC). These strong winds — along with dry fuels from ongoing extreme drought conditions — helped the fire to make a rapid southeast run of about 65 miles in 6 hours. Burning over 572000 acres, the Morrill Fire has become the largest wildfire on record for the state of Nebraska; one fatality was directly attributed to the fire.

The initial southeastward run of the fire transitioned to a more gradual southward spread around 0300 UTC on 13 March, as a cold front moved southward across the region (surface analyses). The GOES-19 3.9 µm shortwave infrared brightness temperature first reached 138ºC — the saturation temperature of GOES-19 ABI Band 7 detectors — at 0236 UTC.

During the subsequent nighttime hours, the bright glow of the Morrill Fire was evident in a NOAA-20 VIIRS Day/Night Band image (source) at 0907 UTC on 13 March (below).

During the afternoon hours of 13 March, a toggle between NOAA-21 VIIRS True Color RGB and Day Fire RGB images (below) showed the large size of the Morrill Fire burn scar at 1931 UTC, with some fires (shades of red in the Day Fire RGB) still active along the periphery of the burn scar.

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