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Lake effect rain downwind of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB images with overlays of GLM Flash Extent Density, LightningCast Probability and Buoy/METAR reports, from 1301 UTC to 2101 UTC [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

5-minute GOES-16 (GOES-East) Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB images with overlays of GLM Flash Extent Density, LightningCast Probability and Buoy/METAR reports (above) showed glaciating (brighter shades of green) and glaciated (pale shades of yellow) cloud bands streaming eastward and southeastward off Lake Ontario and Lake Erie on 08 October 2023. Some of these cloud bands were producing lake effect rainfall across parts of western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania.

The 2-km resolution GOES-16 CLAVR-x Cloud Top Height derived product (below) indicated that the maximum cloud top height of these lake effect rain bands was generally in the 25000-30000 ft range (lighter shade of green).

GOES-16 CLAVR-x Cloud Top Height derived product, from 1301 UTC to 2101 UTC [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

In addition to the rainfall, there were a few areas of GLM-detected lightning associated with these lake effect cloud bands: at 1826 UTC, 1831 UTC and 1951 UTC. LightningCast Probability values had been fairly high at times for several of these lake effect cloud bands throughout the day (particularly the dominant cloud band moving inland from far eastern Lake Ontario) — and had reached 55-75% about 30-50 minutes prior to the majority of the GLM observations of lightning.

Similar to another case, this particular event demonstrated that the LightningCast model does possess some skill in predicting lightning during the cool season.

Categories: CLAVR-x, GLM, GOES-16, Lightning, LightningCast, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images