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Snowfall in southern Texas

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm, left) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, right) images, with hourly plots of surface reports [click to play animation]

GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm, left) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, right) images, with hourly plots of surface reports [click to play animation]

The combination of lift from an upper-level trough and cold air behind the passage of a surface cold front  set the stage for accumulating snow across far southern Texas on 08 December 2017. As the clouds cleared, GOES-13 (GOES-East) Visible (0.63 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) revealed a narrow swath of snow cover running northeastward from the Rio Grande River toward Corpus Christi — the highest snowfall total associated with this feature was 7.0 inches near Corpus Christi. Daily snowfall records included 0.3 inch at Brownsville and 1.0 inch at Corpus Christi.

A toggle between Terra MODIS true-color and false-color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from RealEarth (below) showed the southwestern portion of this band of snow cover (which appeared as darker shades of cyan in the false-color image).

Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color and false-color RGB images [click to enlarge]

Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color and false-color RGB images [click to enlarge]

Farther to the north, another southwest-to-northeast oriented band of snow cover was seen on Terra MODIS true-color and false-color RGB images (below), stretching from San Antonio to Austin to College Station. The highest snowfall total there was 5.0 inches (NWS Austin/San Antonio summary),

Terra MODIS true-color and false-color images [click to enlarge]

Terra MODIS true-color and false-color images [click to enlarge]

Categories: GOES-13, MODIS, RealEarth, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Suomi NPP, Terra, Winter weather