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Marco becomes a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (with and without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density) [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (with and without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density) [click to play animation | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images — with and without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density (above) showed Marco as it intensified from a Tropical Storm to a Category 1 hurricane at 1630 UTC on 23 August 2020. A pronounced semi-circular convective burst was seen to develop near the storm center shortly before 19 UTC.

A toggle between time-matched Infrared images from Suomi NPP and GOES-16 (below) indicated that the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperature on the Suomi NP VIIRS image was -86.8ºC, compared to -81.5ºC from the GOES-16 ABI instrument (the same color enhancement has been applied to both images). The northward parallax displacement associated with GOES-16 imagery over the southern Gulf of Mexico was also apparent.

Infrared images from Suomi NPP and GOES-16 [click to enlarge]

Infrared images from Suomi NPP (11.45 µm) and GOES-16 (10.35 µm) [click to enlarge]

Categories: GLM, GOES-16, Lightning, Suomi NPP, Tropical cyclones, VIIRS