By Scott Bachmeier •
Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided 30-second interval GOES-16 (GOES-East) Day Land Cloud Fire RGB images (above) that included an overlay of Fire Power and Fire Mask derived products (2 components of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA) — which showed the thermal signature and dark black smoke plume associated with a fire at the Sound Resource Solutions chemical plant in Shepherd, Texas on 08 November 2023. The smoke plume was thick enough to significantly reduce incoming solar radiation reaching the surface, which inhibited the subsequent development of boundary layer cumulus clouds (resulting in a pronounced gap in the cumulus field downwind of the fire and smoke plume source after about 1700 UTC). The FDCA first identified a Processed Fire at 1420 UTC — and the peak Fire Power value of 171.65 MW occurred 6 minutes later (above). The maximum Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) brightness temperature of 55.54ºC also occurred at 1426 UTC (below).Categories: Fire detection, GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images