Moisture from Central Pacific Hurricane Oho moving into British Columbia and Alaska

By Scott Lindstrom • 9 October 2015

GOES-15 Infrared Water Vapor (6.5 µm) Imagery, 0000 UTC 5 October through 0900 UTC 9 October 2015 [click to animate]

The rocking animation* above shows central Pacific Hurricane Oho forming south of Hawai’i and then moving quickly northeast; moisture associated with the remains of the storm is now moving onshore in British Columbia and Alaska Southeast. It is unusual for central Pacific Hurricanes to influence directly the weather in the Pacific Northwest as Oho will (link). Because of the record number of central Pacific Hurricanes this year (in the satellite era at least), however, it’s perhaps not surprising that this is occurring.

The moisture is also trackable via microwave data as shown in the MIMIC Total Precipitable Water animation below.

MIMIC Total Precipitable Water for 72 hours ending 0700 UTC 09 October 2015 [click to enlarge]

Scatterometer winds from 0630 UTC (below) show a region of 40+-knot winds both in the warm sector of the storm and behind the cold front.

GOES-15 Water Vapor Imagery and ASCAT Scatterometer Winds, 0630 UTC on 9 October 2015 [click to enlarge]

*You may notice some full disk imagery missing in this loop (at 0900 and 2100 UTC in the animation). At 2100 UTC the Sun is behind the ground antenna acquiring the data. This happens for a few days each year. The 0900 UTC imagery is missing because of GOES-15 Keep-Out Zone Operations.

Categories: GOES-15, Other Satellites, Satellite winds, Tropical cyclones