Deadly tornado in Yancheng, China

By Scott Bachmeier • 23 June 2016

Himawari-8 0.64 µm Visible (top) and 10.4 µm Infrared Window (bottom) images [click to play animation]

Himawari-8 AHI Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared Window (10.4 µm) images (above) showed the east-southeastward propagation of a mesoscale convective system which produced a deadly tornado in Yancheng, China around 2:30 pm local time on 23 June 2016 (Weather Underground blog). The location of Yancheng (33°23?N, 120°7?E) is denoted by the cyan * symbol, and the animation briefly pauses on the 0630 UTC images which match the reported time of the tornado. Overshooting tops are evident on the visible imagery, and cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -80º C or colder (violet color enhancement) also appear, even after the storm crossed the coast and moved over the adjacent offshore waters of the Yellow Sea (note: due to parallax, the apparent location of the storm top features is displaced several miles to the north-northwest of their actual position above the surface). The spatial resolutions (0.5 km visible, 2 km infrared) of the AHI images are identical to those of the corresponding spectral bands that will be available from the ABI instrument on GOES-R.

An experimental version of the MIMIC Total Precipitable Water product which uses the MIRS retrieval TPW from POES, Metop, and Suomi NPP VIIRS satellites (below) revealed the band of high moisture pooled along the Mei-yu front, which appeared to surge northward across eastern China early in the day on 23 June.

MIMIC Total Precipitable Water product [click to play animation]

The 23 June/00 UTC rawinsonde report from Nanjing (located about 260 km southwest of Yancheng) indicated a total precipitable water value of 66.2 mm or 2.6 inches (below).

Nanjing, China rawinsonde report [click to enlarge]

Categories: GOES-R, Himawari-8, Metop, POES, Severe convection, VIIRS

CIMSS Satellite Blog

CIMSS Satellite Blog

Deadly tornado in Yancheng, China