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CIMSS Satellite Blog

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Tropical Storm Karl in the Gulf of Mexico

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

The intensity of Tropical Storm Karl had recently peaked late in the day on 12 October — however, 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images on 13 October 2022 (above) showed that a large, long-lived convective burst developed southeast of Karl’s center around 11 UTC. Within this larger-scale convective burst, periodic small-scale “hot towers” exhibited cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -90ºC and colder (yellow pixels embedded within areas of darker purple enhancement).

The center of Karl passed very close to Buoy 42055 around 12 UTC — as shown in a plot of wind speed and air pressure (below).

Plot of Buoy 42055 Wind Speed (blue), Wind Gust (red) and Air Pressure (green)

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) iages [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images after sunrise (above) showed the detailed cloud-top shadowing and texture associated with Karl’s convective features. Later in the day, a portion of the tropical cyclone’s low-level circulation became partially exposed, due to northwesterly wind shear across that region.

GOES-16 Infrared Window (11.2 µm) images (below) include contours of deep-layer wind shear valid at 2200 UTC from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site — which displayed the shear that was affecting Karl and helping to partially expose its low-level circulation.

GOES-16 Infrared Window (11.2 µm) images, with contours of deep-layer wind shear valid at 2200 UTC [click to enlarge]

Categories: GOES-16, Tropical cyclones