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Industrial plumes (and an undular bore) across parts of Texas

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Day Snow-Fog RGB and Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Day Snow-Fog RGB and Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB images (above) showed numerous industrial plumes — likely from power plants — streaming southward over parts of Texas on 24 February 2022. Particles emitted from power plant stacks acted to “seed” the surrounding supercooled water cloud droplets, creating a higher concentration of smaller cloud droplets — which were more efficient reflectors of incoming solar radiation, making the plumes appear brighter. Farther to the east, the tightly-spaced cloud bands of an undular bore were also apparent (1901 UTC image).

A higher-resolution view of these features was provided by a sequence of NOAA-20 VIIRS True Color RGB, False Color RGB, Visible and Near-Infrared images (below).

NOAA-20 VIIRS True Color RGB, False Color RGB, Visible and Near-Infrared images [click to enlarge]

Categories: GOES-16, NOAA-20, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, VIIRS