Dissipation of nocturnal valley fog across New England

By Scott Bachmeier • 28 October 2017

GOES-16 Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly surface reports of fog plotted in yellow [click to play animation]

With high pressure dominating across the region during the pre-dawn nighttime hours (surface analyses), strong radiational cooling (minimum temperatures) aided in the formation of widespread valley fog across New England on 28 October 2017.  Post-sunrise GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images revealed the areal extent of the valley fog; however, fog dissipation was fairly rapid during the morning hours as surface heating from abundant sunlight promoted sufficient boundary layer mixing.

During the preceding nighttime hours, development of widespread valley fog could be seen on Suomi NPP VIIRS Infrared Brightness Temperature Difference (11.45 µm – 3.74 µm) images (below) — although surface fog features were obscured at times by patchy cirrus clouds aloft (black enhancement). This example demonstrates that because of the wide (3000 km) scan swath of the VIIRS instrument, in many cases the same region might be sampled by 2 consecutive overpasses. VIIRS will also be part of the instrument payload on the upcoming JPSS series of polar-orbiting satellites.

Suomi NPP VIIRS Infrared Brightness Temperature Difference (11.45 µm – 3.74 µm) images [click to enlarge]

Categories: Fog detection, GOES-16, Suomi NPP, VIIRS