VIIRS imagery/data over the Great Lakes on 2 October 2023
NOAA-20 viewed the (mostly clear) Great Lakes twice early in the morning on 2 October 2023, as shown above. Day Night Band imagery shows convection moving from eastern Lake Superior (lightning strokes are apparent as bright smears in the images) into Ontario. (Day Night Band imagery shows great detail owing to a waning gibbous moon with >90% illuminated! [source]) The Advanced Clear-Sky Processing for Oceans (ACSPO) “Sea” surface temperature algorithm applied to VIIRS data shows surface water temperatures peaking at around 70oF in Lakes Erie and Michigan (yellow in the enhancement used). Lake-wide temperatures are a bit above normal for early October (Lake Michigan ; Lake Erie ; both from this website), a testament to the recent warm weather in the Great Lakes states. VIIRS Day Night Band imagery also reveals river valley fog over Pennsylvania (and elsewhere).
GOES-16 also viewed the convection over Lake Superior. Minimum Flash Area imagery, overlain below on top GOES-16 Band 13 imagery (Click here for an animation of just Band 13 imagery) showed persistent lightning; some of the strokes within the cirrus were quite large in area (purple in the enhancement used).
The image below compares the 5-minute accumulation of Minimum Flash Area at 0652 UTC with the Day Night Band image — that was scanning over Lake Superior at about that time (as determined from the NOAA-20 orbits at this SSEC site). (Here’s a toggle of the same images shown in the comparison below). The light smears in the Day Night Band image might correspond to two small MFA signals displaced north of the signal in the NOAA-20 image, as might be expected because of a parallax shift. The Day Night Band/GLM MFA toggle for the later overpass, at 0831 UTC, does not show a distinct GLM signal were the Day Night Band shows a bright emission.
VIIRS imagery and products are available from CIMSS via an LDM feed. You can also view the imagery at the CIMSS VIIRS Imagery Viewer (or at the Direct Broadcast site here).