River valley fog in the Upper Midwest

By Scott Bachmeier • 28 June 2018

NOAA-20 VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) and “Fog Product” Infrared Brightness Temperature Difference (11.0 – 3.7 µm) images, with plots of Ceiling and Visibility [click to enlarge]

Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) and “Fog Product” Infrared Brightness Temperature Difference (11.0 – 3.7 µm) images, with plots of Ceiling and Visibility [click to enlarge]

Comparisons of NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) and “Fog Product” Infrared Brightness Temperature Difference images (above) showed the nighttime formation of river valley fog in parts of the Mississippi River and its tributaries in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa on 28 June 2018. Due to ample illumination from the Full Moon, the Day/Night Band provided a “visible image at night” with better fog detail in some areas than was seen using the traditional “Fog Product”. (Note: the NOAA-20 images are incorrectly labeled as Suomi NPP)

A toggle between NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band images acquired by the SSEC Direct Broadcast ground station (below) revealed increased fog formation over portions of the Mississippi River between Rochester MN and Madison WI during the 52 minutes separating the two images.

NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) images [click to enlarge]

During the subsequent daylight hours, GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (below) showed that the fog dissipated by 15 UTC or 10am local time.