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Melting of lake effect snow cover in Pennsylvania

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed a narrow northwest-to-southeast oriented swath of snow cover across far northwestern Pennsylvania on 04 November 2020. With full sunshine and strong southerly winds helping air temperatures warm into the 60s F, this narrow band of snow cover melted by the end of the day. This lake effect snowfall event occurred late in the day on 01 November; lake surface water temperatures across interior Lake Erie (below) were as warm as the middle 50s F (brighter green color enhancement).

NOAA-20 VIIRS Sea Surface Temperature product [click to enlarge]

NOAA-20 VIIRS Sea Surface Temperature product [click to enlarge]

The lake effect snow cover was more apparent in GOES-16 True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images created using Geo2Grid (below) — a 2-day animation covering the daytime hours on 03-04 November showed how quickly much of this snow cover melted on 03 November, with a narrow swath (where 6-12 inches of snowfall occurred) persisting into 04 November. In addition, a thin ribbon of fog in parts of the Allegheny River valley was apparent right after sunrise on 04 November, which quickly dissipated with the onset of daytime heating. The melting remains of the band are also apparent on 4 November in this toggle of VIIRS True Color imagery (from this blog post)

GOES-16 True Color images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color images [click to play animation | MP4]



Categories: GOES-16, NOAA-20, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, VIIRS, Winter weather