Super Fog causes multi-vehicle accidents along Interstate 55 in Louisiana
GOES-16 Nighttime Microphysics and daytime True Color RGB images, centered on the I-55 accident site [click to play MP4 animation]
A Super Fog event — caused by the combination of dense fog and smoke from a large swamp fire just southeast of Lake Pontchartrain — was responsible for multi-vehicle accidents along Interstate 55 (between Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain) during the early morning hours on 23 October 2023 (meda report). Before a patch of high clouds moved across the area, 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Nighttime Microphysics RGB imagery from the CSPP GeoSphere site (above) displayed the swamp fire thermal signature as a cluster of darker purple pixels, with its brighter white smoke-filled cloud plume beginning to move west-northwest across Lake Pontchartrain (toward the I-55 accident sites). After sunrise, True Color RGB images showed the continued west-northwest transport of smoke from the swamp fire; the fog/stratus over I-55 between the 2 lakes eventually dissipated by about 1900 UTC.
Around 8-9 AM CST (1300-1400 UTC), GOES-16 Low Instrument Flight Rules (LIFR) Probability values (below) were 70% in the vicinity of the I-55 vehicle accidents — but began to decrease as the fog (and visibility) between the 2 lakes slowly improved throughout the morning hours. LIFR Probability is a component of the Fog/low stratus (FLS) Products suite.
GOES-16 Low IFR Probability product [click to play animated GIF | MP4]