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Severe thunderstorms produce tornadoes and damaging winds in Texas and Louisiana

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm, top) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm, bottom) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in red/cyan [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) include time-matched (+/- 3 minutes) plots of SPC Storm Reports, and showed thunderstorms that produced tornadoes and damaging winds across southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana on 24 January 2023. One tornado caused EF3 damage in the Houston, Texas area. This severe convection developed along and ahead of an advancing cold front — and also produced heavy rainfall (image | text), including a new daily record of 4.05″ at Downtown Houston.

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm), Cloud Top Temperature and Cloud Top Height products at 2124 UTC [click to enlarge]

A comparison of GOES-16 Infrared, Cloud Top Temperature and Cloud Top Height at 2124 UTC is shown above — cursor sampling (below) showed that the Cloud Top Temperature derived product value was about 1ºC colder than the 10.3 µm cloud-top infrared brightness temperature at that particular time (the Cloud Top Temperature product values are typically 1ºC to 4ºC colder).

Cursor sampling of GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm), Cloud Top Temperature and Cloud Top Height products at 2124 UTC [click to enlarge]

1-minute GOES-16 Infrared and Visible images with/without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density (below) revealed a series of lightning jumps (rapidly-growing clusters of bright white FED pixels) during the 1854-2319 UTC period — with FED values as high as 414 at 2019 UTC (minutes after a tornado began to produce damage in the Houston area) and 445 at 2110 UTC.  To match the images shown above, a modified version of the default AWIPS infrared enhancement was used which helps to more easily identify brief pulses of thunderstorm overshooting tops — some of which exhibited cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures as cold as -75ºC.

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm, top) and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm, bottom) images, with and without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density [click to play MP4 | animated GIF]

Two more animations were created over a larger spatial domain than shown above. Here’s is the GOES-16 Mesoscale 2 Sector Band 2 (0.64 µm) from 1620 – 2229 UTC (as an mp4 animation), and here is the same mp4 animation but with GLM 5-minute Flash Extent Density overlain.

Categories: GLM, GOES-16, Heavy rain / flooding, Lightning, Severe convection