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Alonsa, Manitoba EF-4 tornado

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface reports; yellow * denotes the town of Alonsa [click to play MP4 animation]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed the development of a thunderstorm which produced an EF-4 tornado near Alonsa, Manitoba during the early evening hours on 03 August 2018. The cell began to develop southwest of Alonsa around 0020 UTC, and as the thunderstorm matured a series of pulsing overshooting tops could be seen. The haziness evident in the Visible imagery was due to smoke from wildfires in the western US and Canada.

The corresponding GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (below) revealed that the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperature of around -70ºC occurred at 0123 UTC (just prior to the time of the tornado).

GOES-16 "Clean" Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface reports; black * denotes the town of Alonsa [click to play MP4 animation]

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface reports; black * denotes the town of Alonsa [click to play MP4 animation]


The tornado damage path could also be seen in a comparison of ESA Sentinel-2 False Color, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Moisture Index Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images (below).

ESA Sentinel-2B False Color, Normalized Difference Vegetattion Index (NDVI) and Moisture Index RGB images [click to enlarge]

ESA Sentinel-2 False Color, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Moisture Index RGB images [click to enlarge]

Categories: GOES-16, Other Satellites, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Severe convection