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Hail swath in South Dakota

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Day Snow-Fog RGB and Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm) images, with time-matched Local Storm Reports of hail plotted in red [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Day Snow-Fog RGB and Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm) images (above) showed subtle signatures of a swath of hail covering the ground (initial storm report) — shades of red in the RGB images. and darker shades of gray in the 1.61 µm images — in the wake of a severe thunderstorm that was moving northeastward across western South Dakota late in the day on 22 April 2022. The combination of fading daylight and high clouds (and their shadows) passing overhead restricted the amount of time that this hail swath signature could be seen.

A slightly modified version of the Day Snow-Fog RGB — created using Geo2Grid — provided more contrast, making the hail swath a bit easier to see (below).

GOES-16 Day Snow-Fog RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

The corresponding 1-minute GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (below) revealed that this severe thunderstorm exhibited a prominent Above-Anvil Cirrus Plume (reference | VISIT training).

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images, with time-matched Local Storm Reports of hail plotted in red [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Categories: Geo2Grid, GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Severe convection